I’ll Be Devastated If Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40k Movie Doesn’t Happen As Clock Starts Ticking On Amazon’s Adaptation

Warhammer 40,000 has long been one of my favorite science fiction franchises, and I’ve spent countless hours painting miniatures and devouring novels from the Horus Heresy series in particular. So, when Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 adaptation was announced at Amazon I was absolutely overjoyed. Cavill has been known to be a fan of the grim-dark science fiction setting for years, even talking about his passion for the game during the lead-up to the release of the first season of The Witcher, so it was clear that with him attached, the series or film that resulted was going to be in good hands.

While we still don’t know whether the resulting project will be a film or a TV show, there’s a laundry list of amazing elements from Warhammer 40,000 they should include in the project. I’ve been excited to think about what favorite factions might make an appearance, or what worlds or locations from the game’s setting we might finally get to see on our screens when it finally releases. Sadly, though, that excitement has been dampened with the news that Cavill’s Warhammer adaptation might be in trouble.

Amazon Only Has A Few Months Left For A Warhammer 40k Agreement With Games Workshop

And The Show Isn’t As Far Along As I’d Like

The Warhammer 40,000 adaptation was announced not long after the news of Cavill’s departure from The Witcher, which was disappointing news in its own right. Very little news has come out in the time since, until news emerged that Amazon has until December to reach an agreement with Games Workshop over the adaptation’s creative guidelines. This not only puts an alarming timer on the fate of the series, but shows us that the adaptation hasn’t even reached the script-writing stage.

From what I understand, “creative guidelines” encompasses factors like what things the Amazon series can even use and what aspects of the setting Amazon would have rights to, right down to specific terms they’re allowed to use. GW has long been extremely protective of their intellectual property, most notoriously having tried to claim to have trademarked the term “Space Marine“, though they’ve begun to make a lot of agreements with third-party developers to create Warhammer video games in recent years. It’s hardly surprising they’d be this exacting and particular with their first adaptation on a major streaming service.

Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40k Movie Needs To Happen (But Will It?)

The Future Looks Grim

I’ve known that Warhammer 40,000 has a lot of potential to be a major blockbuster franchise beyond the tabletop games, novels, and Games Workshop’s own series released on their platform Warhammer+. More than that, to have someone like Cavill attached is incredibly exciting. Cavill’s passion for the setting and material is something that’s rare to see in someone attached as a producer for a project in any franchise, and this adaptation will give him a chance to play in the IP’s toybox and show audiences what he loves about Warhammer.

For that to happen, though, GW and Amazon need to reach that agreement. I’m doubtful they can do that by December 2024, but that doesn’t mean the future is entirely bleak. There’s still the possibility that Amazon could get an extension on the end-date and keep plugging away at trying to reach agreeable terms with the owner of the IP. In the worst case, December comes and goes and GW decides to either shop the adaptation to other streaming services, or to leave the project stuck in limbo while they reassess.

What Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40k Movie Should Be About

The Possibilities Are Endless

Whether or not the adaptation moves forward, there’s still discussion about what story the series or movie should even tell. There’s a wealth of novels and lore that the show could adapt, with over 54 novels in the Horus Heresy series alone, not including the Siege of Terra follow-up series. There are 10,000 years between those novels and the “modern” era of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, with much of that time period not even touched on by the franchise’s written material.

What I’d like to see is something new for Warhammer 40,000. The challenge of adapting a story to the screen is having to make changes to fit the new medium. Fans of many different franchises are known to be vocal when an adaptation doesn’t meet their expectations. Doing a new story gives the adaptation freedom, without being bound by the limitations of a story that’s already written. A squad of Space Marines and an army of Astra Militarum fighting against overwhelming odds would be classic, but exploring stories of one of the setting’s many Xenos factions would be exciting.