Henry Cavill's Warhammer 40,000 show officially moving forward at Amazon

We've known for a while that Henry Cavill was working on a TV show based on Warhammer 40,000 (often abbreviated as Warhammer 40k), the sci-fi miniature wargame from Games Workshop. The other day, Deadline reported that it's officially happening.

Warhammer 40k is set in the far future when mankind is battling vicious space aliens as well as supernatural creatures in a high-stakes fight for survival. The actual gameplay consists of players moving their miniatures around on a grid, which you might not think would translate immediately into a TV show. But there's also a ton of lore behind the series, much of it developed in novels published by Games Workshop's publishing division Black Library.

Cavill and a team of writers have been pouring over this and other material as they tried to develop potential angles on developing a Warhammer 40k cinematic universe for Amazon. Eventually, they decided that a TV series was the best way to start, and Amazon must have agreed.

Also, according to a prior agreement, Amazon had to decide on a path forward for this cinematic universe that Games Workshop liked by December 2024 or else risk losing the rights to Warhammer 40k, so there was never really any question that we would hear something this month. No showrunner has been hired yet.

The risks of Warhammer

Warhammer 40k is a very popular franchise and Henry Cavill is a very popular actor, especially among people the kinds of people who might be interested in Warhammer 40k; he's gained a reputation as something of a nerdy patron saint, what with videos of him building a PC and stories about his love for The Witcher. He even played Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher TV series...and then left the show after three seasons to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth.

Cavill may have left because he was unsatisfied with the creative direction of the series, an explanation that would help him retain his cred as someone who cares about lore and textual fidelity...or he may have left over contract issues. I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that anyone would make these kinds of moves purely out of integrity and for the love of the game, but the reasons surrounding his exit from The Witcher, at least, remain murky.

I'm also giving a bit of side-eye at the idea of developing the Warhammer 40k show as the first step in building a cinematic universe. It kind of puts me in the mind of Citadel, an expensive spy series that Amazon released to very little fanfare back in 2023; a follow-up series called Citadel: Honey Bunny came out this year that you probably haven't heard much about. Amazon planned Citadel as a multi-show cinematic universe right from the start, which is looking like a pretty silly idea right about now.

Warhammer 40k has a huge built-in fanbase so I'm sure that show will perform much better, but I do wish more networks and streamers would simply make a TV show, see if it catches on, and then maybe talk about spinoffs rather than go in assuming that spinoffs and movies and novelizations and everything else were a given.

In any case, we don't have a release for the Warhammer 40k series as of yet. It sounds like it's just getting underway, so it'll probably be a few years out.

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