In the grim darkness of the far future, there are revenue streams. Per the FT, “Games Workshop is heading to Hollywood” after signing a deal with Amazon to bring its sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 universe to the silver screen.
You can read the whole shebang here, but here’s the key bit:
The agreement encompasses rights to the universe across series, film, and more, and will sit alongside GAW’s activities as they continue to make the best miniatures in the world. This is the first deal of its kind for Amazon Studios for IP of this scale, and it allows the company to utilize the title across its entertainment businesses.
. . . Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Natalie Viscuso (Barbarian, The Lego franchise, the It films, The Departed) partnered with Henry Cavill early on to secure the coveted IP and deliver it to Amazon Studios. Vertigo will executive produce with Cavill and GAW’s Andy Smillie and Max Bottrill alongside Amazon Studios.
The presence of a) The Lego Movie and b) horror is probably quite reassuring to fans of Warhammer 40,000, which is a) also based around little plastic models and b) horrifying (ed. note: the Lego movies ((yes, plural)) are actually surprisingly good).
Shares have undergone an almighty pop this morning following the news .
. . . which is big move for a roughly £3bn market cap company, one of Britain’s biggest listed retailers.
The story really broke overnight with this Hollywood Reporter scoop about actor Henry Cavill’s involvement to “star and executive produce a series adaptation of Warhammer 40,000”.
It’s been a wild few days for Cavill, who has been unceremoniously dumped as Superman by DC Studios, and has announced that won’t be returning as Geralt of Rivia in season 4 of Netflix’s The Witcher. However, he is now tied to the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40,000, having repeatedly outed himself as a nerd.
It all started with an innocent lockdown post .
. . . which revealed Cavill as an aficionado of the Adeptus Custodes, the franchise’s super-elite golden boys.
Since then, there’s been basically endless speculation that Cavill might lend his jawline acting chops to a Warhammer production, which were stoked further when he paid Nottingham-headquartered Games Workshop (often “GeeDubs” to its long-suffering fans) a visit in February. From his post:
If you live in the UK definitely go to Warhammer World. The artistry involved and the synergy between miniature designs that are so enormously diverse, is extraordinary. The brilliance of the artistry is rather wonderfully matched, by the sense of community and also the passion that is shown by both the people who work there and the people who visit. I don’t often feel at home, but I did that day.
All well and good, and although some might have reservations about Amazon’s ability to handle fantasy franchises, clearly GW has snagged a heavyweight partner in Jeff Bezos’s everything empire.
Here’s Goodbody’s Patrick O’Donnell on the significance of the arrangement:
This is an important agreement reached with a major media player in Amazon. It provides a new audience outlet for the Warhammer 40K IP and a potential strategic long term partnership which could extend to multiple IPs of GAW. This should help to broaden awareness and reach of the hobby longer term whilst providing a boost to the licensing line medium term.
Let’s come back to reality. Bryce wrote a great primer on GW back in 2020, when the company was experiencing the favourable tailwinds of people being trapped in their homes by the pandemic — what better time to work on your Tyranids and your myopia? From that piece:
It is easy to be sniffy about Games Workshop, whose main business is to sell fantasy figurines that customers build, paint and send into war across their dinner tables. Only relatively recently have investors come to recognise the intellectual property value of nearly four decades of lore and rule books .
Explosive growth and niche appeal make a volatile combination, however. Investor demands are not easy to balance with those of a very particular band of customers and stakeholders. A valuation of more than 40 times 2021 earnings leaves little room for error.
Sure enough, the company has struggled the end of lockdowns, with shares falling about a third since last summer:
GW was one of the standout stocks on the London market during the 2010s, buoyed in large by a management change that majorly improved how it engages with its vocal fan base. Its core models-and-paints-and-tabletop-games business faces some complex future challenges, including maintaining IP popularity and negotiating the rise of things like 3D printing, but appears to be performing solidly at present.
Nowadays the company — which has a longstanding policy of not doing press — speaks to “plastic crack” addicts through its Warhammer Community website and Warhammer+ video platform, as well as long-bearded magazine White Dwarf.
GW’s probably best known for its miniatures, but this Cav/azon tie-up would only be the latest in a long, long tradition of the group selling its intellectual property, with mixed results.
The list of GW video games is extensive. It’s had a fair few hits along the way: the Dawn of War series, Space Marine, the Total War: Warhammer series and Vermintide are all examples, while recently-released Darktide seem to be doing OK. It has also allowed its IP to be attached to some games that are less acclaimed, including a slew of mobile games and this year’s Necromunda: Hired Gun (“utterly unremarkable”, 5/10 — IGN.)
This approach appears to divide opinion: some punters seem to be happy to receive constant fan service, while others would prefer a quality over quantity approach.
Film and TV is a harder nut to crack. GW already produces several media franchises, having folded several fan-made creations (include community favourite Astartes) on to its Warhammer+ platform.
A good movie (RIP Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie) or prestige TV series has long been the holy grail for fans though. Eisenhorn, a series based around one of GW’s many novels (it runs a publisher, Black Library), is “in development” according to IMDb. A Variety report from 2019 linked Eisenhorn with X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz, while the original author Dan Abnett is nerd royalty and considered one of the best Black Library authors.
Some fans are now speculating that these ideas could be linked together — although Cavill as the rogue inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn would present some challenges. Per the Warhammer 40k wiki:
The torture inflicted by Gorgone Locke resulted in the permanent destruction of many of the nerves in Eisenhorn’s face. As a result, he has limited facial expressions and movement and notably can no longer smile.
(We could include a joke about Cavill’s acting here, but certainly it would be surprising to see him play a character who is not a hunk.) Whatever the plan is, today’s share price pop suggests investors believe this could provide a big new boost to GW.
Perhaps the most important decision from GW’s perspective is who the show is being pitched at: will it be a critically acclaim-able Games of Thrones-style approach that will draw in adult audiences, or be something more child-friendly that can drive little nerds and their desperate-to-please parents into some of the country’s hundreds of Warhammer stores?
Or, like Lord of the Rings two decades ago, can it manage to do both?
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