• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

How people think Cavill's Warhammer 40K will work?

Cyberpunkd

Member
So with a clusterfuck that is Witcher Season 4 and me playing Rogue Trader (I will make a LTTP of that later) it all made me wonder how TF people think the Warhammer 40K project will even make it past the scenario baords?

As a very brief primer this is what a world of Warhammer 40K is about:

1. The Empire of Man (that's us) is a fascist state at a perpetual war with everyone - a good alien is a dead alien. The main guy - God-Emperor of Mankind - is a rotting corpse with a powerful psychic energy that is keeping the forces fo Chaos at bay at a cost of THOUSANDS OF HUMANS SACRIFICED EACH DAY to feed his powers. If he dies people's minds will be invaded a second later by unimaginable horrors that will literally liquify your brain in an instant. Let me subject you to a high-level tactics from the Emperor's chosen:





2. Other forces include: Orcs, which just want to fight and breed so fast no matter how many you kill they always come back ; Necrons - a race MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD that ruled the galaxy and every single planet has probably thousands of them sleeping and waking up soon ; Eldar, think space Elves that will make the day mankind is exterminated their national holiday, just take Nazi racism and dial it up by 10 ; Tau, that shit is just tupid so whatever ; Tyranids - you remember Zerg from Starcraft? This is that, just without a pussy Kerrigan and much more efficient - oh, btw, the rotting fucker on Terra is like a light beacon for them

Someone explain to me how, HOW is this going to be made?
 
Last edited:
It will be in the scouring so it will be part of mans descent and things like the tyranids won't be involved. Necrons won't be an issue neither in that time frame or the tau. It will be mostly chaos and maybe orcs
 
It's a setting rather than a singular story. Start with something like Eisenhorn as an intro. Then you can expand out from there with new shows/films that explore different elements of the universe. You don't need to chuck in everything right away.
 
Ten 60min episodes about Leman Russ hanging out on Fenris.
Do It Reaction GIF

Doubt theyre ambitous to think that they can adapt the whole setting, the origin stories of each Primarch alone would take eternity. Itd take over a decade just to adapt the first 3 Horus Heresy books and itd have to be the most expensive piece of media ever made just to be half good, so thats probably off the table too.

Theyll have to hyperfocus on a small part of the setting and small scope stories (by normal standards, not 40k ones ofc). Luckily there are infinite possibilities there.

I hope they go with the Star Trek structure, have Henry play Ciaphas Cain and its guaranteed to be good.
 
Last edited:
So with a clusterfuck that is Witcher Season 4 and me playing Rogue Trader (I will make a LTTP of that later) it all made me wonder how TF people think the Warhammer 40K project will even make it past the scenario baords?

As a very brief primer this is what a world of Warhammer 40K is about:

1. The Empire of Man (that's us) is a fascist state at a perpetual war with everyone - a good alien is a dead alien. The main guy - God-Emperor of Mankind - is a rotting corpse with a powerful psychic energy that is keeping the forces fo Chaos at bay at a cost of THOUSANDS OF HUMANS SACRIFICED EACH DAY to feed his powers. If he dies people's minds will be invaded a second later by unimaginable horrors that will literally liquify your brain in an instant. Let me subject you to a high-level tactics from the Emperor's chosen:





2. Other forces include: Orcs, which just want to fight and breed so fast no matter how many you kill they always come back ; Necrons - a race MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD that ruled the galaxy and every single planet has probably thousands of them sleeping and waking up soon ; Eldar, think space Elves that will make the day mankind is exterminated their national holiday, just take Nazi racism and dial it up by 10 ; Tau, that shit is just tupid so whatever ; Tyranids - you remember Zerg from Starcraft? This is that, just without a pussy Kerrigan and much more efficient - oh, btw, the rotting fucker on Terra is like a light beacon for them

Someone explain to me how, HOW is this going to be made?

Nobody expect this to be any good.
 
Amazon is behind it, right? I'm guessing it'll be a shitshow with constant preaching about fascists and being held accountable for doing bad things.

Henry is in for another disappointment, question is how long until he realizes that it won't be a faithful recreation of the original lore. Maybe even before shooting starts?
 
If they were smart they wouldnt touch any of the big characters. Keep all of that as back story and context as most of the black library is written.
If they were smart they would just do short stories. They can adapt a few different shories and put Cavill's character at the center of each of them.
If they were smart they would make Cavil a soldier in the Imperium and not a space marine.
with a smaller scale and mostly human characters the stories should be more relatable.
Have a space marine cameo at some point in the show for spectacle and fan service.

I feel if they keep the scale SMALL... focus on character and world building and have each story have a "moral" twist. should make it entertaining.
Imperium would be best as I feel with trillions of soldiers, any story would be plausible.
Inquisition would also be interesting and doable, but I feel inquisition would be hard to relate to, depending on how religious they would play it up.
 
Why not the Eldar? What I think might be interesting would be to take a gene stealer approach with hybrids infiltrating or having one of thr chaos gods influencing the chain of command.
 
I think a compilation style series (or a side animation project) would do wonders. Think Animatrix, Star Wars Visions or Bolter and Hammer (with a better budget of course). Singe story episodes, one and done, get many directors if you want flavor or variety. This way they could cover a lot of the different tastes of 40k in one go.

But unless Cavill will stand his ground and GW will oppose any woke/lore breaking fuckery then this will implode. 40k nerds are already locked into battle with tourists, this would just escalate things.
 
Just set it on a hive world following an Inquisitor. It will require a lot of CGI for the backgrounds but something like that is doable. Andor showed off Coruscant pretty well.
 
Just make some tedious shite about Ultramarines and how serious they are about codex astartes, like everything else.
 
I have a friend who is a major 40k fan and has gotten me to play some of the games like Space Marine 2 and Darktide recently. I enjoy SM2 a lot and think Darktide is simply ok but he has given me an incredibly basic understanding of the lore which is insanely deep and convoluted. I like the universe pretty well but just don't have the drive or the time to even scratch the surface of what 40k has to offer.

He was extremely giddy when it was announced (what feels like ages ago) that Henry Cavill was put in charge of a 40k series being financed by Amazon. I was definitely not as optimistic because of Amazon's less that stellar reputation (2nd only to Disney) on how to ruin beloved franchises. Every now and then I like to give him shit about the progress of this project since there seems to be hardly any mention of it anywhere. He just gets pissed because I rag on Amazon being shit but he seems to think because Cavill is a hardcore 40k nerd savior with complete creative control over this that everything will turn out fine.
 
Last edited:
I think it should be set on various human worlds and each episode is about a different force of chaos or alien race, shit goes sideways, and in the end Space Marines show up and kill everyone and everything.

New cast each episode 'cause no one but the Space Marines live :P
 
I'd either make it some sort of anthology series, or focus on an engaging but narrow story that doesn't try to explain the whole 40K universe, sort of like the Space Marine games which have an enjoyable plot even if you don't know anything about the overall lore.

Amazon is behind it, right? I'm guessing it'll be a shitshow with constant preaching about fascists and being held accountable for doing bad things.

Oh it's an Amazon series?
Yeah in that case either Cavill will eventually exit the project citing "creative differences", or they'll offer him enough money that he'll sell out and star in some shitty adaptation where we learn the good stuff attributed to god emperor, like holding back the chaos gods, is actually being done by a diverse group of women who were betrayed and removed from history because of their progressive ideas.
 
Last edited:
Amazon means it'll be a barrage of attacks on masculinity and everything that makes warhammer appealing to begin with.

I expect to skip it.
 
Something's just don't translate well to film and TV. I think Warhammer 40k is one of them.

You could make an animated version sure. 40k is just all about killing shit and you can't show that 45 minutes straight. And Space marines don't bitch and moan and have drama between them.
 
Something's just don't translate well to film and TV. I think Warhammer 40k is one of them.

You could make an animated version sure. 40k is just all about killing shit and you can't show that 45 minutes straight. And Space marines don't bitch and moan and have drama between them.
"Get up"
 
Something's just don't translate well to film and TV. I think Warhammer 40k is one of them.

You could make an animated version sure. 40k is just all about killing shit and you can't show that 45 minutes straight. And Space marines don't bitch and moan and have drama between them.
Just lean in to that - go Black Hawk Down style but with Space Marines.
 
If I had to bet on one of these options:

1) excellent enjoyable show
2) rubbish show that is forgotten about very quickly
3) cancelled and never makes it into production

I'd be least likely to put my money on option one.
 
Something's just don't translate well to film and TV. I think Warhammer 40k is one of them.

You could make an animated version sure. 40k is just all about killing shit and you can't show that 45 minutes straight. And Space marines don't bitch and moan and have drama between them.
They absolutely do, the complain about honor and many of them do not get along at alll but their honor holds them in check, to a point.
 
I think the best case scenario is if they stay on one planet and engage in small skirmishes. Contain the production.

Trying to make this big will be a disaster.
 
I think the best case scenario is if they stay on one planet and engage in small skirmishes. Contain the production.

Trying to make this big will be a disaster.
They can elude to the scale but keep it local. They could have human soldiers be rescued in the first episode to show how amazing the space marines are
 
They can elude to the scale but keep it local. They could have human soldiers be rescued in the first episode to show how amazing the space marines are
They have done that too much, the entire marketing campaign of Space Marine 2 was that, and several animation films do that exact thing, "normal humans struggle and space marines come from the sky to save them, looking at them as they were gods, as they crush the enemies."
 
They have done that too much, the entire marketing campaign of Space Marine 2 was that, and several animation films do that exact thing, "normal humans struggle and space marines come from the sky to save them, looking at them as they were gods, as they crush the enemies."
They are the emperors angels after all
 
Amazon are pumping a lot of money into this. They need it to be a smash hit.

The only way to do that is to make it as appealing to as many people as possible. That is going to mean toning down the grimdark nature of 40K. A lot.
 
Amazon are pumping a lot of money into this. They need it to be a smash hit.

The only way to do that is to make it as appealing to as many people as possible. That is going to mean toning down the grimdark nature of 40K. A lot.

That would be repeating the same mistake inflicted upon countless other franchises.

40K is very popular as it is with an incredibly devoted fanbase. Cater to that base and the show will be plenty successful. I mean, just remember how the Astartes film project made by a single fan (Syama Pedersen) blew up because of how faithfully it captured the setting.

 
Amazon is behind it, right? I'm guessing it'll be a shitshow with constant preaching about fascists and being held accountable for doing bad things.

Henry is in for another disappointment, question is how long until he realizes that it won't be a faithful recreation of the original lore. Maybe even before shooting starts?
Bro was born into the wrong era.
 
Amazon means it'll be a barrage of attacks on masculinity and everything that makes warhammer appealing to begin with.

I expect to skip it.
Not so, the Terminal List/Dark Wolf series is alllllll masculinity. They CAN pay for good work, sometimes.

Given how Bezos handed a cool billion to 2 guys with virtually no experience to run off to do Rings of Power, don't see why he wouldn't do the same for Cavill.
 
It could potentially be huge with a market starving for any content which isn't made primarily for women, but it seems unlikely it will be done well enough to be popular enough to sustain what will surely be an insanely high budget.
 
Amazon are pumping a lot of money into this. They need it to be a smash hit.

The only way to do that is to make it as appealing to as many people as possible. That is going to mean toning down the grimdark nature of 40K. A lot.
I agree that this is how they will probably make it, but the lesson never seems to be learned. When to try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. Honestly, when I heard Amazon was doing this I didn't have much hope that it would be good.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom