Amazon’s Warhammer 40,000 Deal Is Now Really, Really Real

In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, there is only… contract negotiations? A year ago Games Workshop announced that it was working with Amazon Studios to bring the universe of its legendary sci-fi miniatures game Warhammer 40,000 to film and TV. Today it did so again, but now it’s even officialler.

So What’s Actually Changed Between Amazon and Games Workshop?

The deal announced in December 2022 was not actually necessarily final, but one of the earliest stages of the licensing process: an agreement in principle. What’s happened now is that the agreement is, well… no longer just in principle. Amazon now has the rights to make Warhammer 40,000 film and TV projects, hire talent to develop them and then, eventually, put some of those ideas into production.

“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,” Games Workshop said in a new statement released today.

This means work can actually begin on adapting Warhammer’s dystopian setting, and also that it’s going to be a considerable chunk of time before we see anything out of it. “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,” Games Workshop cautioned fans in its press release. Case in point: back in 2019, the games publisher revealed that it was developing a TV series with Spotnitz Productions based around the character of Gregor Eisenhorn, an Inquisitor in the Imperium of Man’s order of zealous investigators into corruption and heresy. We’ve pretty much heard nothing since, not even that plans to make it have fallen apart—although that now seems much more likely if Amazon has wholesale access to the adaptive rights for 40K as a setting, Eisenhorn included.

Is Henry Cavill Still Involved With Amazon’s Warhammer 40K Projects?

Yup! The former Superman and Witcher—an unabashed fan of 40K who has used his platform in recent years to geek out about his miniatures—will still executive produce Amazon’s projects, regardless of the form they take, “bringing his pen, sword and/or spear to the project,” as Games Workshop put it in the company’s statement.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Cavill will star in those projects, but… c’mon. C’mon. That man is too much of a 40K nerd to not show up in some capacity during all of this. He’ll be advising behind the scenes and no doubt lecturing as many people as he can pin down on the nitty gritty details of Warhammer lore, but that doesn’t preclude him from appearing on-screen. As who? Time will tell, but we’ve previously had some very silly suggestions about that.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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