In case you missed it, Games Workshop have entered the next stage of their agreement with Amazon to bring Warhammer 40,000 to life. Script writing is about to begin and, according the official release from Games Workshop, they have multiple writers lined up for at least one unannounced project that Henry will be Executive Producer for.
Henry's promise will reassure some Warhammer fans
Henry has made a bold promise to the Warhammer community; that the project will live up to the franchise and avoid the pitfalls that many, including Amazon, have fallen foul of before.
If anyone will deliver on that promise, it's him; he famously left the Witcher franchise for not being faithful to the books and game.
So what, precisely, is he promising to be faithful to?
This is where things get tricky. Because, whilst fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe won't want the source material diluted for the masses - it has to be. The universe that Games Workshop has spent over forty years creating is "grimdark". Without a prior knowledge of the lore, the setting is hardly one that is easy to engage with and enjoy.
Humanity is slaved to superstition of a half-dead god-emperor, where independent thinking and any attempt to further humanity results in imprisonment or death. Technology is worshipped without understanding how it works. It's an authoritarian dark-ages in the extreme, with some very uncomfortable parallels with the nastier parts of society today - the need to destroy anything alien and "unlike us".
It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to call the Imperium of Man a futuristic fascist society. Get past the tabletop game into the lore, and there really aren't that many good guys, if at all.
The "woke" crowd are going to lose their minds.
In one novel in the incredibly popular "Gaunt's Ghosts" series, they describe moving through a farmhouse. On the top floor, there are burned child-like dolls nailed to the walls. Then the author reveals that they aren't dolls at all.
Yeah. THAT grimdark.
Combat is brutal and gory. The universe is hopeless. There are shadowy organisations that imprison and torture. Not to mention a daemon god of sex and excess.
In Games Workshop's own words: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war."
There's clearly a balance to be had, though. The many novels of the best-selling Horus Heresy series, the Gaunt's Ghosts books, in fact all of their stories find hope and heroism on a personal level. And nasty bits of the story are much easier to ignore when you read them. It'll be something else entirely to have to see them brought to life on the screen.
A well-executed series or film with the funding of Amazon behind it is possibly one of the most exciting prospects I've ever heard for something to watch. I can't think of a single Intellectual Property that comes close to Warhammer 40,000 fo rdepth and breadth of lore.
A thousand Space Marine chapters. A universe of planets. Space combat. Planetary combat. Titans. Tanks, planes, fortress cities. Imperial Guard, Battle Sisters, the Inquisition, Custodes, Tau, Eldar, Tyranids, Orks, the Mechanicus, Leagues of Votann, Necrons, and all the forces of Chaos.
A timeline spanning over ten thousand years. And I'm barely brushing the surface.
The Horus Heresy - in effect the "origin story" of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, runs to over 66 novels. Given that Game of Thrones turned seven novels into a seventy-three novel TV series, that would be an incredibly long series.
And then they could get into the current content...
So back to the challenge faced by Henry, the writers and actors. It'll be impossible for them to simultaneously satisfy everyone's expectations of "grimdark". Just as it will to portray things in the way everyone expects. But it is possible to turn out a series that does 40K justice, without compromising its core idea.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: Henry Cavil has a hill to climb. But his actions over -and departure from - the Witcher series gives me confidence he'll do a good job. If we see Henry depart this project before it launches, that'll be the strongest indication we could get that Amazon are going down the wrong path with this project, too.
It will undoubtedly cost Amazon a pretty penny to achieve these things, even if they attempt to CGI most of it. And a significant investment on an as-yet unproven series is a serious risk, even for one headed by such a celebrity.
Here's hoping that's what they deliver.
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