Is a 40k movie becoming an inevitability?

[Mr Mystery]

Speculation! Dontcha just love it??

No rumours here. Just aforementioned speculation.

See, Warcraft is getting a movie (though to be honest, it's looking a bit ropey SFX wide). Marvel and DC are taking the box office.

And we're seeing GW branching out into more general merchandising - making the most of their IP through various leases and that - not least of which are their Video Games.

Seems to me that the lure of a movie franchise deal can't be far off. Depending entirely on the deal they can get, there's an absolute poo-load of money in even a half decent movie adaptation.

Now, popular rumour has it that GW have had film companies sniffing around in the past. From a producers stand point, any background setting as rich as 40k's has a fair chunk of your work done for you. It's fully formed, well known, and well loved. Yet the stumbling point in the past is, allegedly that GW want to retain all merchandising rights - and they're not keen on stuff like a McHorus Burger with Emperor Fries etc.

Given how financially important merchandise sales are to the overall profitability of a movie, that's a really big stumbling block to get such things made.

As I pointed out earlier though, GW's attitude to licensing appears to softening - potentially to the point where they've got a more realistic appetite for such things. And, with a successful movie.....there really is an awful lot of cash up for grabs.

Example? LotR. GW did exceptionally well out that trilogy. (Rumour has it they projected to recoup their outlay by the launch of Return of The King, but it actually happened half way through Fellowship). So a good movie can get people playing the game. Flip side of course would be The Hobbit trilogy....films were by no means a flop, but they didn't have the same success for GW's game.

So it's far from a risk free thing - but is it a risk worth taking?

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I'd rather not and I don't think it would work out personally (would probably be some corny CGI fest that ruins the backround) I think a netflix/amazon series would be better and it would probably be more accurate and retain the gritty feel. It needs to be brutal, r-rated and stylised I think.

[YorkNecromancer]

No, absolutely not and never.

It just won't happen. There are many reasons for this:

• Money is the biggest stumbling block. These days, a film Hollywood defines as 'low budget' still costs as much as the GDP of a third world nation. 40K needs special effects; it can't deliver those on a shoestring. And that's before you factor in marketing costs. For a film to recoup its costs, it needs massive, massive levels of marketing. GW's word-of-mouth approach just isn't going to cut it.
• Then there's the source material. It's sad to say it, but 40K is so outdated it hurts. Everything about it is just old news, from the lack of women, to the lack of ethnic diversity to the haircuts. That's going to be a very, very hard sell to non-fans - if not an impossibility.
• There's the issue of age rating. 40K needs to be R-rated, but that means 90% of the fans won't be able to see it, because 40K's fans are, in the majority, young. Look at the terrible trouble 'Dredd' had finding an audience. Yeah, it's become a cult classic because it's awesome, but it made almost nothing on release because of this exact problem.
• There's also the money, which is such a severe problem I'm mentioning it twice. GW is notoriously risk-averse, and I can't see them ponying up the kind of money needed for a gamble like this.

Will they do another cheapo CG thing like 'Ultramarines: The Movie'? Almost certainly.
Will it be crap? Well, the last one featured a full hour of real-time marching for Macragge.
Will it drip with the very worst cliches without ever really getting to the core of 40K's awesomeness?

*sigh*

Of course it will.

Because it'll be done on the cheap by a collection of people with no clue and fanboys who are too desperate to cram in the OHMYGODHOWAWESOME thing they love without the slightest thought as to whether or not it'd make for a good story or not.

At best - at the very best - we'll get something which opens with Brian Blessed reading some cod-Shakespeare nonsense over a black screen as the white text scrawls up, intoning deeply about how This Is All Very Serious, and for the briefest of moments we'll squee with delight because BRIAN BLESSED! until the film actually starts, and it's just a hideous live-action thing where a bunch of fat, ugly extras run around a quarry in Wales, dressed in chainmail and leather trenchcoats which bear no resemblance to any actual 40K army, saying 'For The Emperor' and ending up fighting some skinny Goth kid who's stolen his mum's makeup and painted an eight-pointed star on his face. The film will expect us to take this 'Cradle of Filth' reject seriously as a chaos champion, despite his obvious shortcomings in literally every aspect of life, from his rat-tail mullet to his scratty beard. It will be the most sad, pathetic, tawdry, embarrassing thing any of us ever watch and we will watch it anyway because of course we will, it's 40K, we're so starved for 40K films we still watch those hideous cut-scenes from old games. And we'll get to the end and the credits will roll over that horrible booming, anonymous rubbish GW play over every one of their videos and we'll just sit there with tears running down our faces, pretending not to know why we're crying, when we do. Of course we do.

It's because life is a pointless, meaningless trudge from cradle to grave; because everyone we ever know or love will die; because nothing will last, not our children or our achievements, not any single piece of us; because ultimately, the relentless grind of the aeons will pass by blackly without any mark that we were ever here, personally or as a species, and so not a single thing we do in this life matters. Nothing we ever do has the slightest import or meaning, and the film we just watched? This two and a half hour piece of overblown crap that'll end up on the bottom shelf of the Asda DVD section for £3 on release just proved it. Because it's not a film: it's a single monochromatic tombstone, bereft of meaning, mocking the entirety of human achievement, laughing at even the concept of beauty, wonder or hope.

...

And the saddest thing? Even that won't happen. There will never be a 40K film, and that's probably for the best, because 40K is, to all intents and purposes, unfilmable.

...

So yeah, you might say I'm a little pessimistic in my outlook about the possibility of a 40K film.

[Mud Duck]

Yeah, just a little York.

Yes it could be filmed, and yes it could be great. But why not? As York noted the concepts are dated, most everything in 40K has made it into film in one way or the other. But I think that 'hardest' part would be to get a more general audience too go and spend money to see the movie. Would I? Yes I think that I would; but that's just me.

[Wolfshade]

There was always talk of turning the blood quest into a comic and it got some shots mocked up before GW pulled it as the CG wasn't good enough.

I always thought that Gaunt's Ghosts would make a most excellent series of films, Sharpe in SPAAAACCCEEE! essentially. Sean Bean for Gaunt!

[Mr Mystery]

I don't know if would have to be a CGIfest.

Much like the key to Marvel's success is the sheer diversity of the setting - plus, any budget would come out of the film studio's pocket, not GW's.

[grimmas]

The LoTR have shown us that the capability to handle the special affects exists it'll be no problem. Also the Grimdark needs to be embraced rather shied away from. Any Hollywood PC tinkering will turn it into a joke, think Dredd and the Hunger Games rather than Judge Dredd and Starship Troopers.

Oh and needs to not be about Space Marines, they should be in it but it needs to be "about" actual humans the Astartes are just to far removed from human emotions and goals to carry the film b

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I'd just do an Inquisitor TV Series. Amberley Vail would be my first choice. Ten hour long episodes, a few of those as 2-parters, set each story on a different planet so we can have a better look at imperial society. You could have space marines too, they could be Deathwatch.

Definitely avoid fanboys writing it, wouldn't want it to be the televised fanfic dr who's been the past decade after all.

[Psychosplodge]

Lets face it, unless it's another CGI horror show the only way to do it either Space Sharpe, or The Inquisitor like AX mentioned. Both of which lend themselves better to a series rather than a film, but also allow them to keep the effects to a minimum and it's mostly going to be humans vs humans.

Yorkie has the right of it though it's a limited audience and to maximise the grim dark you lose the wider younger part.

I don't doubt someone in hollywood is probably interested but I've every expectation if it happens it'll be an awful car crash that will make us all cringe while watching it.

[Charistoph]

And the saddest thing? Even that won't happen. There will never be a 40K film, and that's probably for the best, because 40K is, to all intents and purposes, unfilmable.

If it is not filmable, you couldn't make video games taken from different perspectives.

The biggest problem with 40K is that outside of the fans, very very few people have even heard of it. So a lot will have to be done to help bring people in to the story to be part of it. It's doable, just look at what Star Wars was able to do with just A New Hope (not its title at the time), but it is very difficult.

I'd just do an Inquisitor TV Series. Amberley Vail would be my first choice. Ten hour long episodes, a few of those as 2-parters, set each story on a different planet so we can have a better look at imperial society. You could have space marines too, they could be Deathwatch.

Sounds Who-ish. I rather approve. Both Warhammer and Who are British, and the Who series have definitely shown that mini-series length stories inside a regular series.