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THe problem is 40k isn't a narrative with protagonists, but they tried to smash it into one anyway.

Modern 40k suffers from the primarchification of Black library by forcing all stories to turn on the actions of a small cast of protagonists, rather than being a tapestry of history and separate stories that all weave into a setting.

40k's biggest strength and most unique aspect was its power as a setting above a named character, above a protagonist. What we see now is a flanderisation to the extreme down to big name primarch man being the main character of a setting.

40k took this setting centred approach from tolkien because it gives a greater sense of gravitas and depth than a surface level hero adventure for one protagonist.


If we are getting to the point where the universe literally won't turn unless a famous primarch is leading the charge, then 40k is completely bereft of its unique strength, and will become one of the unnumbered boring stories of superhero punchups that we have been saturated with.

For a company that looks at dollar signs, tying your franchise to specific named characters and the actors that play them is highly limiting. Modern studios keep trying to find away around their stars being the centre of the story so that they aren't beholden to them and their careers.


40k is the perfect opportunity to capitalise on the humongous size and scope and the fact that it doesn't have a protagonist and was not designed to have one. It's a great opportunity for the modern streaming strategy of a 3 season show dropped and move on. Because they can keep making a new series in a new corner with a new premise without being tied to previous ones.


As I have said repeatedly, it is a strategically short sighted move for them to go down this primarch fetish route, for many reasons, but not the least of which because 40k is not the story of primarch superheroes and it never was.

Them chasing money down a hole in novels for a specific era of their universe should not be conflated with that era now being the sole central protagonist nor any of those characters be crucial to the story.

40k lasted 10,000 years without them and many stories were told, heroes born and died, without infantile superhero protagonists being required to keep the setting going.

40k is not primarch and never has been. The setting itself is the protagonist and it chews up and spits out demigods on a daily basis, no matter how much plot armour people want to give them.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Perhaps of interest to the discussion? The opening paragraph from Rogue Trader.

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh - the stuff of which the Imperium is made.

To be a man in such times is to be one among untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of these times. It is a universe you can live today if you dare - for this is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. If you want to take part in the adventure then prepare yourself now. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace among the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed…

In theory the first words the first players of 40K ever read to prime them on what was to come. And it still stands up pretty well now.

That is 40K boiled down to its core. The mission statement. That is what the show needs to convert first and foremost.

Frankly a version of that text needs to be at the start of at least the first episode, if not during the opening credits of every episode, either as a Star Wars style crawl or (probably better) a voiceover.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
We've already seen it happen. Just take a peek at the various 40k subs on Reddit like r/40klore or r/ImaginaryWarhammer to see how this cancer of Primarch spank effects literally everything around it, despite only being a minor part of the 40k universe.

And that's exactly why they'd be likely to do something like that. Because that's actually what's popular, and that's what 40k's media output wider than the older hobby actually consists of.

If you check the memes, the social media, the jokes, and the tiktoks (yes, I mention it), it's not Cain, Ravenor, Eisenhorn, or the human characters getting the most attention. It's the Space Marines, and more specifically, Primarchs. Even if they don't do 30k, I think they're missing a trick not doing it about Space Marines, because *that's* what 40k's legacy is.

Space Marines needs to be in in tbh (and Eisenhorn does have Space Marines in the first book, though would be a few episodes in; Cain doesn’t though), but IMO the issue with going too hard on Space Marines is that 1) they’re going to be difficult to translate well to live action and it risks turning into a CGI snoozefest; and 2) by their nature Space Marines are somewhat limited in the stories you can tell with them, with it mostly being battle scenes (again, CGI snoozefest). HH would work in that regard, but it has its own problems.

I think there’s alway a tension between the human centric stories that will look best in live action vs a lot of the iconic elements that will just end up being mostly CGI anyway.

Eisenhorn (or a similar story) works well because it’s a human centric story, that includes most of the iconic elements, and really well introduces the Imperium as most likely the main POV for other stories.

Cain doesn’t have marines in the first book in terms of publishing order, but running his Interitus Prime experience as a flashback early on would be an amazingly awesome sequence. Greedy Admech, inter-faction diplomacy and politics, implacable and unknowable aliens, sudden warp shenanegans all topped off with a last minute clutch rescue by the boys in off-white and yellow (the Reclaimers).

The sequence is referred to extensively in the early books.

 Flinty wrote:
Cain doesn’t have marines in the first book in terms of publishing order, but running his Interitus Prime experience as a flashback early on would be an amazingly awesome sequence. Greedy Admech, inter-faction diplomacy and politics, implacable and unknowable aliens, sudden warp shenanegans all topped off with a last minute clutch rescue by the boys in off-white and yellow (the Reclaimers).

The sequence is referred to extensively in the early books.

Early flashback or tbh even just the first episode (maybe interspersed with some flashbacks to set up his background). Start in medias res with that, have him return to the HQ job at the end then pick up in Ep 2 at the start of the first book where he gets reassigned.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
If they have an opening scroll, it needs to contain “In the grim darkness of the far future…”

and henry (or mark strong) needs to read it.

 McDougall Designs wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
If they have an opening scroll, it needs to contain “In the grim darkness of the far future…”

and henry (or mark strong) needs to read it.

For giggles, I'd love to hear Matt Berry read it in character as Steven Toast.

 McDougall Designs wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
If they have an opening scroll, it needs to contain “In the grim darkness of the far future…”

and henry (or mark strong) needs to read it.

Brian Blessed is still alive and has prior

 Grimtuff wrote:
Well if this thread has shown me anything it is the sheer damage the HH series has done to people's perception of 40k...

Now, if some of us lot think that everything should revolve around oversized manchildren, that all of a sudden MUST be 9ft tall, as we live in the manosphere in 40k and everything has to to be ridiculously tall to be relevant, what do you think the uninitiated are going to think if you present that as their doorway into 40k?

We've already seen it happen. Just take a peek at the various 40k subs on Reddit like r/40klore or r/ImaginaryWarhammer to see how this cancer of Primarch spank effects literally everything around it, despite only being a minor part of the 40k universe.

It's not the Primarchs that make it a good option, it's that the marine characters are more relatable and more human. Loken is why the first few Heresy books worked so well.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So GW could avoid the mistakes of the Star Wars franchise by simply not adapting the Horus Heresy? That’s a great reason for them not to do it!

As for the rest, there’s Gaunt and co, Eisenhorn and co, Cain and co, Gorgias and co, Calpurnia, Kal Jericho, the Eldar from the Eldar trilogies, Ahriman, the Space Wolves characters, the Inquisitor trilogy characters, etc.. there are are a lot of characters who fill out an omnibus (or two!) with three novels and some short stories.

All of which are a relative handful of books (though eisenhorn and Co have been getting more fleshed out), none of whom are actually really movers and shakers within the setting driving forward the narrative except for maybe Ahriman. These are all side characters on their side stories and secondary adventures, basically. These are the Lando Calrissians investigating mysterious disappearances on Cloud Cuty books, not Han, Luke, and Leia in the heart of galactic politics saving everyone from the latest BBEG threatening galactic peace and stability and the continuation of the galactic govt, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
THe problem is 40k isn't a narrative with protagonists, but they tried to smash it into one anyway.

Modern 40k suffers from the primarchification of Black library by forcing all stories to turn on the actions of a small cast of protagonists, rather than being a tapestry of history and separate stories that all weave into a setting.

40k's biggest strength and most unique aspect was its power as a setting above a named character, above a protagonist. What we see now is a flanderisation to the extreme down to big name primarch man being the main character of a setting.

40k took this setting centred approach from tolkien because it gives a greater sense of gravitas and depth than a surface level hero adventure for one protagonist.


If we are getting to the point where the universe literally won't turn unless a famous primarch is leading the charge, then 40k is completely bereft of its unique strength, and will become one of the unnumbered boring stories of superhero punchups that we have been saturated with.

For a company that looks at dollar signs, tying your franchise to specific named characters and the actors that play them is highly limiting. Modern studios keep trying to find away around their stars being the centre of the story so that they aren't beholden to them and their careers.


40k is the perfect opportunity to capitalise on the humongous size and scope and the fact that it doesn't have a protagonist and was not designed to have one. It's a great opportunity for the modern streaming strategy of a 3 season show dropped and move on. Because they can keep making a new series in a new corner with a new premise without being tied to previous ones.


As I have said repeatedly, it is a strategically short sighted move for them to go down this primarch fetish route, for many reasons, but not the least of which because 40k is not the story of primarch superheroes and it never was.

Them chasing money down a hole in novels for a specific era of their universe should not be conflated with that era now being the sole central protagonist nor any of those characters be crucial to the story.

40k lasted 10,000 years without them and many stories were told, heroes born and died, without infantile superhero protagonists being required to keep the setting going.

40k is not primarch and never has been. The setting itself is the protagonist and it chews up and spits out demigods on a daily basis, no matter how much plot armour people want to give them.

Tapestries of history and separate stories, etc don't sell to mainstream audiences.

And narratives about singular characters have a short shelf-life. Audiences want an arc, not 4+ rambling seasons where it becomes clear there is no arc. The HH would have to be shortened considerably not to feel like a bloated waste of time, but if you shorten it you finally get your Endgame that signals the end of the franchise to the audience.

Star Wars couldn’t keep momentum for more than 3 films with the same characters. The prequels and sequels made money, at the expense of poisoning the brand to two separate generations. Treating 40k like Star Wars or even Game of Thrones will just push away everyone not interested in another superhuman soap opera, and then push away the ones who are interested when they realize it’s never doing to deliver.

Star Wara problem was really that there were decades of real world time between trilogies that made using the same actors to tell stories about the same characters an impossibility. The MCU has demonstrated what you can do with character driven narrative for ~15 years. It's a shame they couldn't sustain it longer, byt they had an impressive run of it.

The MCU kept adding new characters in new subgenre films, though. They weren’t all various flavors of Iron Man.

Hellebore wrote:THe problem is 40k isn't a narrative with protagonists, but they tried to smash it into one anyway.

Modern 40k suffers from the primarchification of Black library by forcing all stories to turn on the actions of a small cast of protagonists, rather than being a tapestry of history and separate stories that all weave into a setting.

40k's biggest strength and most unique aspect was its power as a setting above a named character, above a protagonist. What we see now is a flanderisation to the extreme down to big name primarch man being the main character of a setting.

40k took this setting centred approach from tolkien because it gives a greater sense of gravitas and depth than a surface level hero adventure for one protagonist.


If we are getting to the point where the universe literally won't turn unless a famous primarch is leading the charge, then 40k is completely bereft of its unique strength, and will become one of the unnumbered boring stories of superhero punchups that we have been saturated with.

For a company that looks at dollar signs, tying your franchise to specific named characters and the actors that play them is highly limiting. Modern studios keep trying to find away around their stars being the centre of the story so that they aren't beholden to them and their careers.


40k is the perfect opportunity to capitalise on the humongous size and scope and the fact that it doesn't have a protagonist and was not designed to have one. It's a great opportunity for the modern streaming strategy of a 3 season show dropped and move on. Because they can keep making a new series in a new corner with a new premise without being tied to previous ones.


As I have said repeatedly, it is a strategically short sighted move for them to go down this primarch fetish route, for many reasons, but not the least of which because 40k is not the story of primarch superheroes and it never was.

Them chasing money down a hole in novels for a specific era of their universe should not be conflated with that era now being the sole central protagonist nor any of those characters be crucial to the story.

40k lasted 10,000 years without them and many stories were told, heroes born and died, without infantile superhero protagonists being required to keep the setting going.

40k is not primarch and never has been. The setting itself is the protagonist and it chews up and spits out demigods on a daily basis, no matter how much plot armour people want to give them.

Politely (and I don't disagree that 40k and the setting was/is still this for many people), how much of this is true to MOST audiences?

Look at what the youth fandoms and the most vocal 40k fans talk about. They talk about Primarchs, the Big Heroes, and Space Marines, especially the Legions or more memable Chapters. 40k's biggest strength is it's memability and OTTness. It's not about the sandbox, and a sandbox is an awful setting for a show to tackle anyways, because there won't be mass satisfaction by what gets focused on - better to focus on something that nearly EVERYONE gets, such as...

...yup, the Primarchs and Space Marines and Big Names - because those transcend forums and old gamers, and appeal to a mass audience. And, like it or not, that's simply just realistic. GW has grown larger than ever since its shift towards Big Names, and that reflects in it's current vocal fanbase.

Will GW do it? I haven't got a clue, and I don't want to speculate. However, I do want to point out that people who dislike the Primarchs and the Big Name-ification of 40k are in the minority. You say that 40k "isn't a narrative of protagonists", but I think you might be incorrect looking at 40k and its fanbase now.


(also, I do want to point out with Tolkien - the most popular Tolkien media, the Lord of the Rings, famously centres on a group of movers and shakers at the heart of one of the greatest power shifts between Ages in that setting. We aren't seeing the lives of Random Rohan soldier or Gondorian knight - we follow the Fellowship, on their super important quest. The hobbits might just be smallfolk pulled out of their depth, but they're at the heart of one of the most important events that shapes the entirety of Middle-Earth)

Yeah I thought the comment on Tolkien was off base too.

On the other hand LOTR takes place over 1 year in-universe and has 3 main character groups and the world defining actions are all resolved at the end of the 6th book. It basically follows what was said above with a well defined set of story arcs and is basically self contained. The HH is way more sprawling.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah I thought the comment on Tolkien was off base too.

Tolkiens stories have protagonists, but they cover thousands of years and have different protagonists. Elrond appears in a lot of them, but he's not the main character.

The characters of the lord of the rings aren't the main characters of Arda, nor are the characters of the hobbit. From Tolkien's perspective, I'd say that the languages were the protagonists... or iluvetar given that everything in Arda functions by his will alone (gandalf is only a mover and shaker because iluvetar made him one and had him sent back to continue his role - something gandalf couldn't do himself).

The distinction is, while there are focused characters, they aren't what the whole setting revolves around. Arda continues on regardless of the actions of the characters. It existed before gandalf was there, and it continued after he was gone. The protagonist of the lord of the rings isn't Feanor, despite how central to the silmarillion he was.



40k is not about the primarchs, the setting isn't about what they do in life. Primarchs are but one set of characters that appear and disappear in the setting.


It is a terrible idea to set up a media franchise that tells the viewer 'these are the main characters of 40k' because that's not true.

EDT: The point is that the horus heresy is not 40k and you all keep trying to say it's the best way to make 40k tv. it was one event in the existence one species in the setting that lasted what 15 years? In a setting that covers 60 million.

The primarchs were the protagonists of the horus heresy human event, but that doesn't make them the main characters of the 40k setting and never did. The HH isn't 40k and shouldn't be used to tell people what 40k is.

It's like taking the hobbit and pitching to the public as what Tolkien's life work is about and then everyone thinks that bilbo is the protagonist of the Silmarillion and LotR.

They are making 40k universe content, and the HH isn't the totality or even the focus of that universe. It's also not what is current.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
(also, I do want to point out with Tolkien - the most popular Tolkien media, the Lord of the Rings, famously centres on a group of movers and shakers at the heart of one of the greatest power shifts between Ages in that setting. We aren't seeing the lives of Random Rohan soldier or Gondorian knight - we follow the Fellowship, on their super important quest. The hobbits might just be smallfolk pulled out of their depth, but they're at the heart of one of the most important events that shapes the entirety of Middle-Earth)

Tolkien didn't write his stories with franchise opportunities in mind. Games Workshop PLC very much does.

He kinda did actually. He was the one to originally sell the movie rights to the book. He just probably never imagined it to become the juggernaut it would be.

 Hellebore wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah I thought the comment on Tolkien was off base too.

Tolkiens stories have protagonists, but they cover thousands of years and have different protagonists. Elrond appears in a lot of them, but he's not the main character.

The characters of the lord of the rings aren't the main characters of Arda, nor are the characters of the hobbit. From Tolkien's perspective, I'd say that the languages were the protagonists... or iluvetar given that everything in Arda functions by his will alone (gandalf is only a mover and shaker because iluvetar made him one and had him sent back to continue his role - something gandalf couldn't do himself).

The distinction is, while there are focused characters, they aren't what the whole setting revolves around. Arda continues on regardless of the actions of the characters. It existed before gandalf was there, and it continued after he was gone. The protagonist of the lord of the rings isn't Feanor, despite how central to the silmarillion he was.



40k is not about the primarchs, the setting isn't about what they do in life. Primarchs are but one set of characters that appear and disappear in the setting.


It is a terrible idea to set up a media franchise that tells the viewer 'these are the main characters of 40k' because that's not true.

EDT: The point is that the horus heresy is not 40k and you all keep trying to say it's the best way to make 40k tv. it was one event in the existence one species in the setting that lasted what 15 years? In a setting that covers 60 million.

The primarchs were the protagonists of the horus heresy human event, but that doesn't make them the main characters of the 40k setting and never did. The HH isn't 40k and shouldn't be used to tell people what 40k is.

It's like taking the hobbit and pitching to the public as what Tolkien's life work is about and then everyone thinks that bilbo is the protagonist of the Silmarillion and LotR.

They are making 40k universe content, and the HH isn't the totality or even the focus of that universe. It's also not what is current.

sure, thats all well and good and all, but in terms of the majority of content thats been sold to mass market audiences, its mostly revolved around the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, which conveniently enough features quite a few of the same characters or characters who are fairly direct relations of one another that enables them to narratively "pass the baton" as it were. There hasn't been a silmarillon story or not much of anything else to fill that "thousands of years and different protagonists" bit. The only serious attempt at anything like that thus far was the Rings of Power, which is wholly made up and relies on narrative linkages back to The Hobbit and LotR in order to capture interest (and as I'm told by many on the internet wasn't any good). Likewise the video games like shadow of war/mordor were equally fully made up, but even then are narratively set adjacent to the films/books and tie-in to those storylines directly enough to provide the needed narrative hook for audiences to dive into.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
He kinda did actually. He was the one to originally sell the movie rights to the book. He just probably never imagined it to become the juggernaut it would be.

Giving the story a fairly definitive ending somewhat limits expansion forwards.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
He kinda did actually. He was the one to originally sell the movie rights to the book. He just probably never imagined it to become the juggernaut it would be.

Giving the story a fairly definitive ending somewhat limits expansion forwards.

Is that a bad thing though? My understanding was that Tolkien's works were supposed to be a new legend for our times. That the 4th age was basically the end of myth and all the wondrous races that we no longer see any more running into the start of our own recorded history. Therefore, it can;t run too far forward, or else you lose that grey area interface between "middle earth" and our earth.

I mean, if anything the HH series is quite close to the concept of the other works of the various Tolkiens, in that it spends a lot of time filling in blanks in events that were myth and legend to the people of the main setting, i.e. end of the 3rd age.

And as Rings of Power has tried to capture, there are quite a lot of age-defining, and indeed age-ending, events that happen throughout the books he did write. Destruction of Gondolin, overthrow of Morgoth, fall of Numenor, that kind of thing. Plenty to depict if its just more content that is being looked for.

 Flinty wrote:
Is that a bad thing though? My understanding was that Tolkien's works were supposed to be a new legend for our times. That the 4th age was basically the end of myth and all the wondrous races that we no longer see any more running into the start of our own recorded history.

If you're wanting to build a franchise that can be milked indefinitely, putting an ending there is a big no-no. Compare to Marvel, which will never end. Prequels are one thing, but we've all seen how much certain parts of fandoms can be annoyed by deviations or contradictions. Middle-Earth being the result of one man's visions make anything added 'feel wrong', whereas something that began as a group project has more wiggle room with concepts.

Considering when Lord of the Rings was released and his intentions behind it - I don't think he was aiming for a franchising deal with Hollywood followed up by a toy line and model range or any of that when he came up with the idea and made it one of his major life's works.


That doesn't mean he ignored such offers when they came after, but it wasn't "made for it" like how Marvel creates things specifically for certain market sectors today.



Also I'd argue that Marvel 100% DOES have endings for their characters. They end them and the world and setting all the time. They just don't stay dead and re-create them. Either simply rebooting from the very start again; or just continuing with a new character playing the role in the evolving setting.

Right now they are on a strong "everything in 1 universe/marketing block" and "nothing ends it just keeps cycling" kind of deal. Which honestly story wise seems insanely messy (esp when they are pulling characters like Conan into a high fantasy futuristic setting).

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Is that a bad thing though? My understanding was that Tolkien's works were supposed to be a new legend for our times. That the 4th age was basically the end of myth and all the wondrous races that we no longer see any more running into the start of our own recorded history.

If you're wanting to build a franchise that can be milked indefinitely, putting an ending there is a big no-no. Compare to Marvel, which will never end. Prequels are one thing, but we've all seen how much certain parts of fandoms can be annoyed by deviations or contradictions. Middle-Earth being the result of one man's visions make anything added 'feel wrong', whereas something that began as a group project has more wiggle room with concepts.

Flip side, even if you don't have an ending setting your series too close to "current" time is dangerous as you risk overshootong it and having to make it up - see what happened with Game of Thrones once they ran out of books to adapt. Adapting a completed work like the Harry Potter series, Lord of the Rings, or yes, the Horus Heresy is better, because you have a definitive endpoint and know what the ending will be and can write your screenplays and scripts with a destination in mind and deliver a finished product to your audiences. Rather than a meandering and disjointed mess (which is also what HH became as a book series, nothing that can't be solved by cutting ~75% of the filler to focus on the core narrative). Once you finish that series, you now have plot threads for spinoff, prequels, sequels, side stories, and everything else you might be able to imagine.

I think a successful Warhammer Cinematic Universe needs to start somewhere that touches enough of the setting that you can spin off another couple dozens TV shows and films from. For that reason I'd say HH is not necessarily a good start point, because you're heavily limited to spinning off within the 30k era. The only spinoff into 40k would involve taking a time jump with characters like Abaddon, Gilligan, Carl, etc. which might not be the best route to take, as that puts you back into chasing an ongoing narrative being developed in books.

Now, yes you can absolutely just make up a series with a strong ending just for film or tv, you don't need to adapt a book or whatever to have a strong narrative arc, but I would posit that Hollywood isn't really any good at doing that. They never want to commit to an ending because they want to always leave every franchise open for continued development and exploitation and treat films as products rather than stories. The disjointed narrative of the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the relative collapse of the post-endgame MCU are symptoms of that mindset and examples of what happens when you don't have clear and well-defined plans for narrative direction. The skillset within the film and television industry needed to plot out and sustain an interlinked multimedia/cinematic universe indefinitely doesn't really exist, it's still a relatively novel concept that has only come around in the last 10-15 years and has mostly been limited to a relative handful of visionaries and dedicated individuals working on what's probably a literal handful of franchises/IPs. There's more experience on the TV side of things with that, but even then it's mostly limited to managing and finishing up *one* series rather than managing a portfolio of simultaneously running shows and films, etc.

Wasn't Harry Potter still being written when the first films came out? And far as I can tell HH is still being written now too (ok isn't it technically Siege of Terra which is like the second part of that story)

I don't see them doing HH. It's not like the board game where GW can make 1 faction and then story-lore their way around it being both sides of the armed conflict. You can't just copy-paste actors onto the other side of the screen (I mean you technically can -- ok you actually can but its not free not easy to do)


I'm also not expecting their first venture to be Lord of the Rings Two Towers or Clone Wars battle sequences. That's a huge investment for live action to pull it off right; let alone pull it off with titans, armoured warriors and all.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Now, yes you can absolutely just make up a series with a strong ending just for film or tv, you don't need to adapt a book or whatever to have a strong narrative arc, but I would posit that Hollywood isn't really any good at doing that. They never want to commit to an ending because they want to always leave every franchise open for continued development and exploitation and treat films as products rather than stories. The disjointed narrative of the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the relative collapse of the post-endgame MCU are symptoms of that mindset and examples of what happens when you don't have clear and well-defined plans for narrative direction. The skillset within the film and television industry needed to plot out and sustain an interlinked multimedia/cinematic universe indefinitely doesn't really exist, it's still a relatively novel concept that has only come around in the last 10-15 years and has mostly been limited to a relative handful of visionaries and dedicated individuals working on what's probably a literal handful of franchises/IPs. There's more experience on the TV side of things with that, but even then it's mostly limited to managing and finishing up *one* series rather than managing a portfolio of simultaneously running shows and films, etc.

Actually I'd argue the situation is even worse in Hollywood - they've somewhere lost a LOT of skill in pacing, plotting and writing even just 1 good film let alone interconnected ones. Interconnected ones just show the major storytelling issues they've got with their method of production. Or if those skills are not lost, then they are being smothered and crushed by other elements that are enforcing choices which are detrimental to the plotting and pacing of the film from a story and lore perspective.
It's an endemic problem within Hollywood itself and its nothing new. Heck anime has a lot of issues with it and those, in theory, just need translation; but the hollywood machine often wants to re-invent everything even down to rebuilding the whole story.

The other big issue with interconnected is elements such as actors moving on/falling out/having a major publicity boo-boo; or aging out (esp child actors getting too old). These "out of film" elements can be huge issues; esp if the films aren't made back to back like Lord of the Rings were. Even the Harry Potter films had issues with it that they had to work around and they are possibly some of the best examples of a cast (esp a child cast) remaining fixed throughout a long running series.

Deleted.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
He kinda did actually. He was the one to originally sell the movie rights to the book. He just probably never imagined it to become the juggernaut it would be.

Giving the story a fairly definitive ending somewhat limits expansion forwards.

Definitive enough guy himself was writing continuation at one point

I know it'd be considered sacrilege here, but it's also quite possible for them to do stuff like the Horus Heresy but not have it set 10,000 years in the past and switch characters around so there's more crossover with the modern setting.
There's a fundamental question of if this is going to be stories set in the actual, currently existing setting, or if it's going to be how the MCU is to Marvel comics - telling many similar stories but in a separate distinct universe with a different backstory and things happening at different times and to different characters.

deano2099 wrote:
I know it'd be considered sacrilege here, but it's also quite possible for them to do stuff like the Horus Heresy but not have it set 10,000 years in the past and switch characters around so there's more crossover with the modern setting.
There's a fundamental question of if this is going to be stories set in the actual, currently existing setting, or if it's going to be how the MCU is to Marvel comics - telling many similar stories but in a separate distinct universe with a different backstory and things happening at different times and to different characters.

I don't see how you can do a story set 30K years ago and just move it 10K years into the future.

I mean 100% Hollywood would and could do that, but then the original lore would be torn apart and left burning in ashes on the floor.

One thing GW are good at is protecting their IP. They aren't just going to let Amazon do whatever they want - plus a big part of the marketing behind this was Henry quitting Witcher over lore issues and moving to do Warhammer. GW and Amazon have to nail the lore almost perfectly in this first production otherwise all that marketing is thrown out the window in an instant.

I wonder if a Kill Team series could work? Hunting down a Xenos incursion of somekind (genestealer cult?) Allows you to get the GW poster boys on screen (Space Marines are the iconic 40K faction), but without getting into a full on war, and you can mix in some normal humans with an accompanying Inquisitor, local PDF, etc.

Plus the idea of small unit special forces doing sneaky stuff is something that the general public can grasp quite easily.