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Just before Christmas Games Workshop finally signed an agreement with Amazon’s Content Services. After a year of discussions This contract gives them the right to produce TV series and films based on the characters we all know and love in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. For Amazon, this is an effort to rival the success of the Marvel superhero endless series of films. They also get lucrative associated merchandising rights. Could this include models?
Licensing is a major part of GW’s revenue. Indeed the stock market analysis of the company by Morningstar describes it has having two segments the Core: where they produce and sell the over 1,000 products we buy and play with and Licensing: including all revenues from licences from external partners. Whilst the latter is the smaller of the two sides, particularly in turnover, it does have the advantage of once the deal is set the royalties are pure profit. When the deal was finally inked in on December 18th GW’s shares rose by 1.4%.
A statement from GW said "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. The agreement will only proceed once the creative guidelines are mutually agreed between Games Workshop and Amazon". Given this and the fact that production schedules for major cinematic projects are up to two years, particularly as there is likely to be a heavy dependence on CGI, we’re not going to see the results til probably 2026. But what’s a couple of years against 40K?
The good news is that they have Henry Cavill, known for playing Superman but more importantly a Warhammer fan, as an Executive Producer on the project as well as signing up to play in it himself. A team of scriptwriters is currently being put together and GW are going to work in close conjunction to make sure they get the feel of it right. This is vital as we see the only big screen offering to date was the straight-to-DVD film of 2010: Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 movie which despite the voice acting of such luminaries as Terence Stamp and John Hurt was pretty dire.
We must hope that we get something of the quality of Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Indeed, in that vein, it’s worth noting that Amazon have also got the option to do the same for GW’s Fantasy world. Whether that’s Old World or Age of Sigmar who knows? Certainly not the analysts and mainstream reviewers who were struggling to describe to their audiences what Games Workshop is all about despite it being a £3.25 Billion pound enterprise. Nobody needs telling what the Marvel Universe is about these days.
Watch this space (marine)!