However, work on it won’t start until 2025
One year after first announcing a licensing “agreement in principle” for Amazon Warhammer 40k TV series and movies, Games Workshop has finally signed a full contract with the retail and streaming behemoth – but don’t expect the goods to appear on our screens anytime soon.
The ink is dry and the deal is done, as announced by Games Workshop in an investor update and on its Warhammer Community website early Monday morning – Amazon will make 40k TV and movies, just as planned in its December 2022 reveals.
Game’s Workshop Stock has also seen a slight growth since the official confirmation. According to Google Finance at around 09:10 AM GMT+2 on 21 December 2023, as seen below:
Games Workshop has sold Amazon “exclusive rights… in relation to films and television series set within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, together with an option for Amazon to license equivalent rights in the Warhammer Fantasy universe,” according to its investor update post.
According to WarCom, Henry Cavill will serve as executive producer on the project, presumably giving him an E.P. credit on any films or TV shows that result from the deal.
WarCom’s Monday morning article, with its usual euphemistic coyness, reminds us that “TV and Film production is a mammoth undertaking,” and projects can take three years or more to complete from the point of initial contract signing.
The agreement ensures an entire year to set down creative boundaries between GW and Amazon before any productions are permitted to begin work, which should appease sticklers for Warhammer 40k lore but annoy those waiting for a release date.
According to the investor article, “Games Workshop and Amazon will work together for a period of 12 months to agree creative guidelines for the films and television series to be developed by Amazon.
That lengthy prelude should allow GW to ensure Amazon doesn’t take too many liberties with Warhammer 40k’s famed dismal, dark sci-fi universe, while also giving the creative minds behind these projects time to prepare.
On the other side, it implies that the (possibly massive) earnings from these 40k TV shows and movies won’t be realized for at least a year, despite the fact that GW forecasts income from its IP licensing efforts a year ahead; as the firm affirms in its Monday morning investor update, “no change to its forecast for the 53 week period ending 2 June 2024”.
So we won’t be able to figure out how much Amazon paid for these rights for a long – but we can expect the ‘licensing’ line in GW financial reports to start growing by the end of 2024 at the very latest.
The company awarded a $3000 bonus to UK employees in 2023 due to bumper profits despite lower licensing sales this year – GW employees must be cautiously intrigued to see what influence Cavill and his merry band of TV writers have on the business.