Amazon brings Warhammer 40,000 to the screen, starring Henry Cavill

There’s big news for little warriors this week.

Games Workshop, the company behind Warhammer 40,000, the wildly popular tabletop game with miniature figures, announced Monday that it has signed a deal with Amazon Studios to bring the game to life on television and movie screens.

Actor Henry Cavill, known for his roles in the “Superman” franchise and as the title character in the Netflix fantasy series “The Witcher,” will appear on the show and serve as executive producer.

The two companies signed a deal last year to create television shows and films based on the Warhammer franchise, and are now moving on to bringing the game’s universe to life.

“All we can tell you now is that an elite group of screenwriters, each with their own specific passion for Warhammer, is being assembled,” Games Workshop said in a rack on their website.

Warhammer 40,000 was released in 1987 and has enchanted players in the decades since as they take charge of small but mighty warriors for “supremacy in the grim darkness of the far future,” according to the game’s core. rulebook.

Two or more players place their hand-painted plastic models on a terrain set in the 41st millennium – the rulebook recommends a dining table or a floor – and send them into battle between aliens and supernatural beings.

The game has developed a significant fan base and detailed lore over the years, becoming Games Workshop’s most popular product. Hundreds of novels have expanded on the Warhammer universe and mythology. It also has video game spin-offs.

However, much of the passion for the game comes before the battle even begins. Games Workshop does not sell ready-made models for Warhammer 40,000. Instead, players purchase parts to build and paint in details themselves for a personal touch.

Cavill is a fan of the game himself.

In 2021, the actor, who is known to build his own personal computers, will discussed his Warhammer hobby on “The Graham Norton Show.”

“You have to paint them,” Cavill said. “There’s the painting-modeling side of the hobby, and then there’s the gaming side of the hobby.”

The game found a new legion of fans during the pandemic, including other actors and musicians ready to battle Cavill in the fictional dystopia.

Studios have noticed the trend and capitalized on the growing interest with shows like the HBO Max series “The Last of Us,” which drew larger audiences than some of the network’s flagship shows.

Amazon Studios has already bet on fantasy franchises, with ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’, a prequel to the JRR Tolkien novels. In 2021, the studio released ‘The Wheel of Time’, based on the book series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

No details have been given on expected release dates or the types of projects planned for the Warhammer franchise. Games Workshop said it may be a while before the little warriors stand up on a movie screen.

“TV and film production is a huge undertaking,” the company said. “It’s not unusual for projects to take two to three years from this point before anything appears on screen. Still, things are going well now.”