The Warhammer 40,000 live-action deal Amazon signed years ago still doesn’t have a finished script. The animated version already has a director, two executive producers and a studio.
Variety reported that Amazon MGM Studios, Blur Studios and Games Workshop are developing an animated TV adaptation of the sci-fi franchise. It’s a spinoff of the Warhammer 40K episode from Secret Level, the Prime Video anthology series.
Dave Wilson directed that episode. He’s back in the same role for the animated show, and he’s credited as its co-creator too.
Cavill is on board, and that answers a question fans had
Henry Cavill, a well-documented Warhammer 40K fan who is already attached to live action adaptations of the game, joins as an executive producer.
That matters more than a standard producer credit usually does. Games Workshop CEO Kevin Rountree confirmed Cavill’s continued involvement during a recent financial report, after fans had started reading the silence around the project as a sign the actor had walked.
Rountree’s update on the live-action side was less encouraging. Games Workshop said the creative team is only now moving toward writing a script, several years after Amazon inked its deal for the rights to the property.
Secret Level’s crew keeps showing up
Wilson isn’t the only name carrying over. Tim Miller, who created Secret Level, will executive produce the animated project as well.
Blur Studios, which Miller co-founded, helped produce the anthology and is on this one too. So the animated Warhammer show is being made by more or less the same people who made the 12-minute version of it.
Every installment of Secret Level was based on a different video game. That’s how Concord, a shooter that lasted less than two weeks on sale before Sony pulled it, ended up immortalized in CG.
What we don’t know yet
No release window. No cast. No episode count. No word on which corner of the 40K setting the series covers beyond its link to the Secret Level short.
Games Workshop has spent years licensing this property without much to show for it on screen. An animated spinoff with the original episode’s director attached is the closest thing to momentum the franchise has had, and it’s still a project with a director and a logline rather than a trailer.
