Amazon, Games Workshop announce Warhammer 40k film deal Amazon has reached into the Warp and pulled out an "agreement in principle" with Warhammer maker Games Workshop (GW) that would give it film, television and merchandising rights to the company's sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 franchise. It also found recently projectless actor Henry Cavill in there, who has signed on to star and …
If they produce cringe, low quality but expensive movies, then certain schemes immediately come to mind.
This is such a stupidity. They could have redistributed those billions among the struggling warehouse workers or do something else that is useful.
Nope, let's produce another class C movie that will just waste people time.
I get the meaning of this, but I'm not sure you do. What is the principle behind that sentiment?
Is it that resources should not be expended on entertainment as long as primary needs remain unfulfilled elsewhere? That's a position that makes sense on some level, but only if it's applied consistently; otherwise it's just someone trying to pass their personal preferences as objective truth. To be consistent with the principle, we'd also need to call for abolishing all low-yield food until famine is eradicated, abolish the fashion industry until everyone has high-quality practical clothing, make just one type of car until everyone has adequate transportation, not to mention abolish all television and books except for information, education, and whatever is needed to keep society stable. Scientific research should also be focused on strictly practical objectives.
There's some fuzzy areas there, so we'd need someone to figure out what counts as a worthy need and what doesn't. I'm sure they'll be utterly selfless in doing that, and... oh! Look! We've followed your reasoning to its philosophically necessary conclusions, aaaaand we're now pretty much living in the WH40k universe, sans xeno!
Yeah, I'd rather just watch it on TV, thanks.
> Look at the recent Amazon releases - they are universally carp. There is no value in what they do, but somehow they spend a ton of money on it. That doesn't sound right.
Aw, bless you. Look, it's usually a matter of luck that a production works artistically or is a market success, even with the best will in the world and with the studio bosses kept at a safe distance.
However, your conspiratorial view of world could be fun.... I'm imagining a retelling of Mel Brook's The Producers, done in the style of Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, in which the eponymous show runners, in order to pocket the financiers’ money, devise show so offensive that it is guaranteed to be a flop.
I have a friend that made a mainstream series for Amazon. It was well received, by a sell out audience at the premier. Amazon didn't spend a penny on the production, the studio funded the whole thing itself and then, in this case, Amazon baught it outright and rights to produce the second series. If they hadn't, some other tv station would have, or it would have gone to dvd.
Everyone involved makes money: studio, producer, actors, all crew and tech subsidiary advertisers and of course Amazon themselves.
What you are saying is provably incorrect.
> Tax Avoidance. If they produce cringe, low quality but expensive movies
Correlation is not Causation. Or, don't jump to assume conspiracy when cock ups are more likely.
However, I do agree that Amazon's recent Lord of the Rings series has made me wary of Amazon's approach to TV and beloved source material. I was disappointed when the Frank Kelly-helmed Consider Phlebas project was cancelled, since Kelly's other work shares sensibilities and concerns with Iain Banks's non-genre fiction, and his visual style was superb too. The project was cancelled by the late Banks's estate. Maybe they saw something in Amazon's studios that put them off the idea, and I should feel relieved that the Culture was not brought to the screen by Amazon. Maybe the trustees of Banks's estate just looked at Amazon's treatment of warehouse staff and couldn't square it with their late friend’s values.
Just musing... It's appropriate that Amazon produce 40K, an authoritarian universe. So maybe the best producers of a Banks Culture movie series series will distributed, an ad-hoc anarchistic collection of skilled amateurs, creating good work for the love of it, assisted by machine learning and proto Minds.
> They've turned the cameras on to themselves and going to produce documentaries
Haha, for sure! The possibility of such a project easily turning meta (with a small m) wasn't lost on me.
Springtime! for Bezos and Amazon!
Winter! For etc
Or, having turned the cameras on themselves to create reality TV, they then add some AR malarky to make Mixed Reality TV. Let's see if they can digitally recreate Gene Wilder from the Producers and Bob Hoskins from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and insert them into the filmed footage.
Roger Rabbit is rendered photorealistically and Mr Hoskins is rendered as a 'Toon.
They've turned the cameras on to themselves and going to produce documentaries
They're only doing this to get the IP to produce their own servitors. Ring Mk3 will contain the brains of warehouse union workers.
But after seeing the way IP like Bored of the Rings, Rings of Power, Altered Carbon etc were butchered in the name of wokeness, I'm dubious. Then again, The Boys pretty much worked. Included a strong female lead. See also-
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmjgv/joe-biden-supporters-embrace-dark-brandon
I thought the writing in that show was clever because it perhaps subverted expectations, ie you could view Homelander as either a Trunp or a Biden caricature, and some not so subtle digs at Hollywoke's sexualisation of women and minority characters. Fascism has never really been about left or right, it's about the dangers of authoritarianism and control.
But GW is a little possessive of it's IP compared to the Tolkien Estate, who just want cash. So maybe it'll end up being appropriately grimdark and dystopian, or maybe Amazon will try crowbarring in it's messaging and it'll be another clusterfunk. It's a deep vein to tap, and potential for lots of spin-offs. The Sisters of Silence have plenty of opportunities for strong female leads, just not much in the way of dialogue.
> IP like Bored of the Rings, Rings of Power, Altered Carbon etc were butchered in the name of wokeness,
Yet more evidence that people using the word 'wokeness' would do well to define what they actually mean by it. Otherwise it just becomes a tribal badge. As in "Woke is whatever I don't like and I don't have to tell you why".
The Altered Carbon books I haven't read for years, but one thing I do remember is a powerful female antognist who is as casually dangerous to our hero as the Pharaoh's wife was to Joseph. The whole premise is that rich people can inhabit any physical body they can afford, male, female, whatever. It doesn't matter if you're richer than god and nearly immortal, and poorer humans are your playthings, as disposable as tissue paper. The TV series conveyed this well, and violently and graphically to boot.
But again, I don't know what you actually mean by 'woke', so can't specifically refute it.
Yet more evidence that people using the word 'wokeness' would do well to define what they actually mean by it. Otherwise it just becomes a tribal badge. As in "Woke is whatever I don't like and I don't have to tell you why".
There are plenty of definitions available. Even here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
Or watch Critical Drinker, Disparu and plenty of other reviews. For Bored of the Rings, it was also the reaction from the show. So they reflexivly attacked critics because those critics must be racist, sexist etc. Reality is the show trampled all over the lore, and suffered from terrible writing. A prime example would be the recharacterisation of Galadriel, which was nothing like she was portrayed in Tolkien's work. Descended from elven royalty, a consumate diplomat. Yet in the show, she came across as a petulant brat with a 'tempest in me'. The show also assumed critics were attacking the actor, when the actor was just doing her best with the script she was given.
It doesn't matter if you're richer than god and nearly immortal, and poorer humans are your playthings, as disposable as tissue paper. The TV series conveyed this well, and violently and graphically to boot.
I think Altered Carbon stayed closer to the book, but it was criticised for it's violence and portrayal of women. It changed Kovacs and the Envoys from being government special forces to plucky freedom fightes, because the hero couldn't be the oppressor. Changing the villain to his sister instead of a mob boss also didn't really make sense. But then came Woke Furies, which bore little resemblance to the book. Falconer's character was completely changed, Kovacs became a bit player stumbling around while Falconer ran the show. Then there was the AI relationship between Poe and Dig, complete with twitching avatars because they needed a visual representation of the AI's doing something.
Which was a shame. Season 2 may have had budget cuts, so changed the story to one that could be shot in a couple of set locations. But Richard Morgan's work is all about identity anway, ie as you say jumping into a new sleeve. Plus if you've read Market Forces, or Black Man, you'll know he's probably not a fan of the Vampire Squid. Of course Black Man got retitled to 'Th1rte3n', because people who hadn't read it just objected to the title, and missed the point(s) of the novel.
The Expanse was cut short. I would have watched 12 seasons of the Expanse if these were made.
Rings of power was a woke, boring, forgettable, cheap-looking, uninteresting non-tolkienesque PoS.
Though it looks like the logic for the Mechanicus was already embedded. A ship floats because it looks up. Maybe WH40k is the grim dark future of Rings of Power.
If Cavill is going to play anyone in the WH40K-verse it should be Ciaphas Cain. Have him grow some muttonchop style sideburns and a bit of a pompadour, he's almost a dead ringer for the image on the books.
But honestly, I hope what they do is some animated projects. As much as it'd be cool to see a live-action Astartes action, animated would be a lot easier and cheaper than trying to build all the sets and do all the CGI. If an entire thing is basically some actors in front of a green screen and they add in the backdrops later, you may as well just make it an animated show. Whether they do some kind of 3D thing or classic 2D, I don't honestly care. Just as long as they take it seriously and don't turn it into another GI Joe sort of production.
I'm very much on board with Cavil Cain :D
There's decent material to work with, both one off and serial adventures, there's plenty of blank canvas to work with, and it's already structured in a way that introduces the universe without being too crazy.
It's also damn funny.
I'm not really interested in Astates(tm) stuff. Make great anime IMHO.
If they go something original, then doing a cowboy bebop/firefly style rogue trader could be fun.
Oh, and the infinite and divine, with a movie length final episode please. "No, I brought five" :)
I think that jumping headfirst into the Horus Heresy would be a big gamble. It may work, but if it doesn't, oh boy, it can fail really hard. Just making the primarchs work on-screen would be challenging. Also, Cavill as the God-Emperor would be fine, but it would also be a waste; the God-Emperor is more like a force of nature than a character. He has very, very little screen time.
Wasn't there some talk some time ago about an Eisenhorn series? I think it would be an excellent choice. It's a great story that has both action and drama, the characters are mostly regular humans, so more easily relatable, it showcases all of the more mature themes in the setting, of which there are plenty, and Cavill would make an awesome Inquisitor.
> leaving the path open for a future trip to the Old World [ plain Warhammer, traditional orcs and elves and halflings etc], too.
That's unlikely at this time - it would get confused by the general public with that World of Warcraft movie from a couple of years back, if not with Amazon's own Lord of the Rings TV series.
That sort of commercially aware reasoning is why Guillermo del Toro chose not to to make an adaption of Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness - because a film with a similar setting (ancient alien ruins on Antarctica hiding eldritch horrors) had recently been made. Sadly, that movie was a hack job called Aliens Vs Predator.
Fighting Fantasy books were all stand-alone, if I recall, with no common setting or characters.
I recall wrong: Wikipedia now tells me:
Most early Fighting Fantasy titles were set in locations later revealed to be on the same continent called Allansia. Later a whole world named Titan was developed, with subsequent gamebooks set on three main continents—Allansia, Khul and the Old World.[5] Other titles are set in unrelated fantasy, horror, modern day, and sci-fi environments.
Amazon has occasionally paid for the odd good thing. Throw enough at the wall, I believe the saying goes.
GW are one of the most zealously protective outfits of their IP I know of; so much so they’ve even started issuing cease and desists to home brew authors - you know, the very life blood of war gaming. I would be surprised with lawyers that aggressive (arguably worse than Apple or MS) that this project will get off the ground.
As one of the original GW designers commented; one of the problems now is the universe is so fleshed out there is actually rather little one can do in the scope of the big story and ‘top’ characters. And the day to day life of a commander will have battle of endor syndrome (for those that know free space 2 modding…)- the actions of most individuals will have no bearing on the big picture.
There’s only one way to view this. Cynically. That way I won’t be disappointed if they mess up; and might even be surprised if they get it right.
I quite enjoyed the CGI Space Marine movie. Hopefully this will be an enjoyable film and with luck something that can be expanded on.
I do wonder if it will be the expected Space Marines vs Chaos outing, or if it will drop in one of the many other possibilities. Even if not as the main story.
@Jedit
"I think it would be extremely inadvisable to have a story where the Astartes are the heroes without the context that while they are shit totalitarian fanatics, the alternative is infinitely worse."
I think starship troopers did a fantastic job of merging the fascist vs existential threat thing. If its done well it can look really good.
My favourites however were the Eldar. Thinking themselves above it all and manipulating circumstances to avoid their own casualties even at the expense of other races, yet running from extinction.
...because I really only see two choices here.
Either they make this true to the source material, grimdark and all, and then it doesn't make any money because almost nothing hard R rated ever does, and there's just no way you can do anything 40K without that. Not enough people "get" what it's all about, the general audiences don't like it, it doesn't make any money and it gets immediately cancelled.
Alternatively they make it PG13 enough for it to make money, and it ends up being a terrible pale imitation of what it ought to be - a dark and horrific future where everything has gone terribly, terribly wrong and human life is debased, desperate, and disposable - in which case the fans won't like it, it devolves into a massive internet argument about toxic fandom, and then gets immediately cancelled.
Not sure there's actually a way for them to win this one.
I really hope I'm wrong.
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