Amazon Studios’ Warhammer 40K Has a Big Deadline Coming in December 2024

Amazon Studios and Games Workshop has until December 2024 to decide on the direction of a planned Warhammer 40K live-action franchise. This week, Games Workshop released its semi-annual financial report to investors. The report (which showed continued strong sales for the tabletop game maker) provided an important reminder about the fate of a planned Warhammer 40K project in the works at Amazon Studios. While Games Workshop and Amazon Studios entered into an agreement to develop a live-action Warhammer 40K project, the two companies only have until December of this year to decide on the “creative guidelines” for the project. 

“Games Workshop and Amazon are working together for a period of 12 months, ending in December 2024, to agree creative guidelines for the films and television series to be developed by Amazon,” the annual report reads. “The agreement will only proceed if the creative guidelines are mutually agreed between Games Workshop and Amazon. We will update you accordingly.”

This isn’t new news, but it was a reminder that the live-action project (set to be executive produced by Henry Cavill) has a relatively truncated timeline to move to its next phase. Although this may seen concerning for Warhammer fans, the relatively short timeline means that a project either will move closer to happening or Games Workshop will re-take control of the rights to its signature IP. Given that many other big-name projects have lingered in development hell for years, the fact that Games Workshop isn’t willing to let a project stall out in early pre-development probably means they are serious about finding the right partner to making a live-action Warhammer project a reality. 

While there are rumors that Amazon somehow “interfered” with the canon of Warhammer 40K with the recent reveal that there are women Custodes (a kind of superhuman bodyguard for the functionally undead Emperor of Mankind) or that Henry Cavill was upset by these changes, these appear to not be based in reality, especially as the annual report makes clear that Amazon Studios is solely a creative partner for a potential live-action project.