Amazon’s Warhammer 40,000 series | Henry Cavill

[TheVileOne]

Arent the Orks essentially the most neutral with them just wanting to fight for the lols?

I suppose depending on how you want to define neutral in the Warhammer-verse.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Yeah the orks still create killing machines and love conflict so get involved in battles constantly. That's about as neutral as it gets lol.

 

[metaphysician]

The main concern I would have is making a 40K show that doesn't drive off the audience with the degree of how everyone is terrible and everything is ****ed. My 40K-fan friend favors using either Ibram Gaunt or Ciaphas Cain as the starting point, depending on whether you want to lean towards "drama" or "comedy". That way, even if the overall milieu is absolutely dystopic horrorshow, you still have a central character who is sympathetic and effective.

( Yes, The Boys. I highly doubt The Boys would have been nearly as successful if it didn't have Hughie and Annie as "Actually decent people" for primary protagonists. )

 

[TheVileOne]

The main concern I would have is making a 40K show that doesn't drive off the audience with the degree of how everyone is terrible and everything is ****ed. My 40K-fan friend favors using either Ibram Gaunt or Ciaphas Cain as the starting point, depending on whether you want to lean towards "drama" or "comedy". That way, even if the overall milieu is absolutely dystopic horrorshow, you still have a central character who is sympathetic and effective.

( Yes, The Boys. I highly doubt The Boys would have been nearly as successful if it didn't have Hughie and Annie as "Actually decent people" for primary protagonists. )

I think it would have to be like almost of Game of Thrones, where almost everyone is fighting against each other, but within each faction you have people you empathize with, even the people who do the most terrible and rotten things.

Not that Game of Thrones is my favorite series, but like look at Cersei. By Season 6 people are practically rooting for her to take revenge on all her enemies, from a situation she basically brought about on herself.

But you can also look to stories like Judge Dredd and for decades, Dredd has been about a brutal cop in a brutal, fascistic police force and police-controlled government. Even in that, there are still humanity and dimension and depth to these characters. And you know for years, Dredd has played around with Dredd being a tool of such a system.

You could also go the Space Marine route with characters like Titus.

At the same time, I don't want Amazon and Games Workshop to bleach or sanitize the material either to make audiences more comfortable. The fact is we should be questioning their motives and authority.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I think it would have to be like almost of Game of Thrones, where almost everyone is fighting against each other, but within each faction you have people you empathize with, even the people who do the most terrible and rotten things.

Not that Game of Thrones is my favorite series, but like look at Cersei. By Season 6 people are practically rooting for her to take revenge on all her enemies, from a situation she basically brought about on herself.

But you can also look to stories like Judge Dredd and for decades, Dredd has been about a brutal cop in a brutal, fascistic police force and police-controlled government. Even in that, there are still humanity and dimension and depth to these characters. And you know for years, Dredd has played around with Dredd being a tool of such a system.

You could also go the Space Marine route with characters like Titus.

At the same time, I don't want Amazon and Games Workshop to bleach or sanitize the material either to make audiences more comfortable. The fact is we should be questioning their motives and authority.

I think this would be the best approach and you need something like Chaos to be the bad guys who do things so abhorrent you can't help but root for the humans.

 

[TheVileOne]

LOL, Chaos Gods will be the Night King and White Walkers of the show.

 

[FunkMiller]

The main concern I would have is making a 40K show that doesn't drive off the audience with the degree of how everyone is terrible and everything is ****ed. My 40K-fan friend favors using either Ibram Gaunt or Ciaphas Cain as the starting point, depending on whether you want to lean towards "drama" or "comedy". That way, even if the overall milieu is absolutely dystopic horrorshow, you still have a central character who is sympathetic and effective

Caiphas is probably the most sympathetic character they could go with out of the box. Though Eisenhorn’s arc is the more interesting one, story wise. Gaunt’s a little too one note for me.

I hope he doesn’t choose to play a space marine or primarch. They’re generally too dull as protagonists. Little hard to get drama out of a genetically engineered super soldier, with a fascistic allegiance to the church and state, or an equally fascistic allegiance to the powers of chaos. The marines are always best when written as a force of nature.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

LOL, Chaos Gods will be the Night King and White Walkers of the show.

Yep pretty much though I did love Chaos in Titan Legions.

 

[metaphysician]

I mean, as primarchs go I could maybe see him as Gulliman, in the current story arc version of him. He's sympathetic, in large part because he's *not* the stereotype, he's a dude who wakes up millenia later and finds that the world is ****ed up deeply in ways that were never the desired result. Its just, the current Primarch Sulliman Returned storyline would be a *terrible* choice as an introduction to WH40K. Its a "take the status quo and blow it up" storyline, those only work after you've firmly established a status quo to blow up.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

What are the Eisenhorn books called I can’t seem to find them on Amazon or EBay

 

[FunkMiller]

What are the Eisenhorn books called I can’t seem to find them on Amazon or EBay

Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus

Awesome thanks

 

[misjuevos]

This was from last year, Cavill was on a podcast and spoke about making a 40k. This is just a clip someone made from that podcast where he speaks on Warhammer specifically.


Notice Henry corrects himself when saying "adapt", and changes to make. Implying he wants to stay faithful to the source.

 

[Iceman]

The main concern I would have is making a 40K show that doesn't drive off the audience with the degree of how everyone is terrible and everything is ****ed. My 40K-fan friend favors using either Ibram Gaunt or Ciaphas Cain as the starting point, depending on whether you want to lean towards "drama" or "comedy". That way, even if the overall milieu is absolutely dystopic horrorshow, you still have a central character who is sympathetic and effective.

( Yes, The Boys. I highly doubt The Boys would have been nearly as successful if it didn't have Hughie and Annie as "Actually decent people" for primary protagonists. )

Very good point. They need to choose the central
character carefully while still accurately portraying what that world is like.

 

[TheVileOne]

The show will need to find that balance of having characters you still empathize with, even though they are tools of authoritarian regimes and monarchies.

I recall Captain Titus was an original character for the Space Marine game. Even though he's an Adeptus Astartes, he acts honorably, and he's accused of heresy by the Empire, and he believes in seeing past the Codex Astartes and actually thinking for yourself. You are going to need characters like that who the audience can latch onto.

Also, even though the Empire is arguably bad, they are in a cruddy situation and just trying to defend humanity from other factions who are arguably worse and survive the forces of chaos.

I think the Emperor himself likely wouldn't approve of many aspects of the religion that grew around him and the way the theocracy is run.

 

[Sithborg]

Notice Henry corrects himself when saying "adapt", and changes to make. Implying he wants to stay faithful to the source.

Thus proving Cavill is an idiot and why you don't want these type of hardcore fanboys in positions of power.

 

[Monsieur Xavier]

It's a least 2 years away, relax

 

[misjuevos]

Thus proving Cavill is an idiot and why you don't want these type of hardcore fanboys in positions of power.

I don't quite follow how you came to this conclusion. Could you elaborate a bit. I thought Cavill was saying he wants to keep faithful to the source, how is this a bad thing? Keep in mind though I know nothing about this lore. So I don't know if he is actually talking about good stories in the podcast.

 

[Arachnerd]

Thus proving Cavill is an idiot and why you don't want these type of hardcore fanboys in positions of power.

As opposed to just disregarding the source material entirely and instead of making your original property, slap an IP's name on it? Yeah, that sure worked out great for that new Witcher spin-off.

Obviously neither extreme is good, but if you're going to adapt something, it's best that one should at least be familiarized with the source material or learn something of it rather than not. I'm confused as to why you think Cavill wanting to stay faithful to the Warhammer 40K lore is in any way a bad thing, especially since this show isn't even in full development yet where you can even speculate how it'll turn out. Just seems weirdly preconceived of you?

 

[Pennywise]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/12/18/warhammer-amazon-contracts-signed-the-news-every-warhammer-fan-has-been-waiting-for/

Now comes the fun part: working out all the creative details with our partners and getting the first script written and into production. What Warhammer 40,000 stories should we tell first? Should we kick off with a movie or a TV show? Both?!

All we can tell you right now is that an elite band of screenwriters, each with their own particular passion for Warhammer, is being assembled to help bring the setting and characters you love to the screen. This illustrious group will be championed by Henry Cavill, who stands ready to take his place as executive producer – bringing his pen, sword and/or spear to the project.

TV and Film production is a mammoth undertaking. It’s not unusual for projects to take two to three years from this point before something arrives on screen. Still, things are now properly rolling, and you can bet we’ll bring you all the latest updates and cool snippets as soon as we’re able.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Cool. Hopefully we’ll get some news soon on which stories they are going to tackle first, as well as some more casting news.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Excellent news. Currently reading the Horus Heresy books and they could be a great place to start. I think it would need a TV show though to do it all justice.

 

[Gee]

For the Emperor! Happy for Cavill.

Games Workshop are quite protective of their IP so this shouldn't end up like Netflix's The Witcher especially with a W40k fan EP'ing this.

 

[Arachnerd]

I am so hyped for this.

 

[Iceman]

Please be good!

Excellent news. Currently reading the Horus Heresy books and they could be a great place to start. I think it would need a TV show though to do it all justice.

Agreed that Horus Heresy would be a decent way to kick it off, and also might work better with a show.