A universe built on cosmic horror calls for a director who knows horror, and Amazon appears to have reached the same conclusion.
Prime Video's live-action Warhammer 40,000 adaptation starring Henry Cavill now has Mike Flanagan attached. Flanagan’s new version of Stephen King’s Carrie is currently topping the streaming charts. United Artists has also joined the project. Given the source material, a better match is hard to imagine.
The script is next
As usual with Games Workshop, the update arrived without much fanfare. CEO Kevin Rountree disclosed in the company’s July financial report that Amazon had assigned United Artists and Flanagan to the project. The report also gave a brief note on where things stand.
“Having completed initial outlines, Mike should soon be moving on to script,” according to the report.
That means the outlines are done and the script comes next. It’s real movement on a project fans have been nervously checking on for years.
The report also confirms that Cavill is still part of the production. He’s a devoted fan of the tabletop wargame and its lore, so his continued involvement counts for a lot. It should also reassure anyone still uneasy about his exit from Netflix’s The Witcher.
Why Flanagan makes sense
His track record speaks for itself. Flanagan has already adapted King twice, with Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. At Netflix he created The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher, a string of horror series that few streaming-era projects can match. He also has DC Studios’ Clayface lined up.
Warhammer 40,000 is set in a distant future where humanity spread into the stars and ended up at war with aliens, cosmic horrors and worse. The franchise was grimdark long before grimdark became fashionable. That gives a director with a talent for making dread feel personal a lot of material.
The pressure is real as well. This will be the first live-action Warhammer 40,000 adaptation, and plenty of fans are heavily invested in how it turns out.
Don’t set a calendar reminder yet
No timeline has been given. Games Workshop’s report says so directly: “these adaptations will take years to bring successfully to market.”
Note the word “adaptations,” though. Because it’s plural, it suggests the Amazon partnership could lead to more than one movie or series.
The animated side is moving faster
Animation is the place to look for something sooner, since that pipeline is further along. The Warhammer 40,000 episode of the Secret Level anthology ranked among the franchise’s best screen outings so far, and another installment is coming.
“We have almost completed an episode for Secret Level Season 2,” Rountree said in the report. The catch is that this episode is set in Age of Sigmar, the fantasy sibling that gets less attention than 40,000.
Fans of boltguns and chainswords don’t need to feel left out, though. Games Workshop has a bigger project underway.
“We have begun work on a full animated Warhammer 40,000 series featuring our Space Marines – Deathwatch,” Rountree said. “This series will be written by John Orloff, with Blur again animating, and released through Amazon.”
Whether you sing hymns to the God-Emperor or mutter something unholy to the Ruinous Powers, more Warhammer 40,000 is on its way to your screen, and a horror director is writing the live-action version.