Mike Flanagan has discussed the challenges of adapting Warhammer 40,000 into an Amazon TV series, calling it “brutally difficult.”
Flanagan, writer, director and showrunner of a number of much-loved Netflix horror TV shows including The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher, has signed a multi-year deal with Amazon to develop and produce original series for the studio. The first of these is an adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic, Carrie, which recently hit Prime Video. Next up is a Warhammer 40,000 TV show, which will be part of Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe. The former Superman actor is set to star in the show.
Meanwhile, Flanagan has another project many fans can’t wait for him to get to: The Dark Tower. But this adaptation of Stephen King’s much-loved fantasy saga sounds even further away. Indeed, Flanagan admitted over the summer that he’s having a tough time getting a green light for The Dark Tower, despite the fact it’s relatively straight forward in his head.
Warhammer 40,000, however, is not. Speaking on The Process Unlocked, Flanagan explained why adapting Warhammer 40,000 is so much tougher than The Dark Tower.
“I'll tell you, I feel like I'm climbing my adaptation Everest right now, because I've been working — and this is out there so I can talk just barely a little bit about it — but I've been working on Warhammer,” he began.
Flanagan’s approach to adapting The Dark Tower is, straightforwardly, to adapt King’s books in order. “That one I feel like I figured out,” he said. "You do the books.
“Stephen King is genius in how he structures The Dark Tower because he starts this giant worldbuilding potentially, overwhelming story with two people in a landscape without detail. It's the simplest start,” he continued. “It's one of the most perfect lines of any book: 'The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.' It is two characters. There's a clear objective. One is running away, one is pursuing, and it's a desert. There is nothing else to look at. It's so simple and so clean and on top of that foundation, he adds a universe one brick at a time.
“And so that's the way to do it. The problem with the other approaches is people who try to jump in in the middle or people who try to jump in at a different point, because you can't throw an audience face first into this huge universe. It's overwhelming. And King did it right. He walked you in, started with two people and nothing else and walks you in one step at a time. So my adaptation was that, it was just doing the books and doing them in order. And there's little changes you make to fit the the format, but my Dark Tower approach is remarkably faithful. And so 70% of my job is done for me by Steve. So it's not that difficult. You know, the difficult thing is just figuring out how to get in.
“Warhammer is not like that.”
Flanagan then went on to point out that the Warhammer 40,000 universe has 700 novels to its name, compared to eight for The Dark Tower. It is a bewildering backstory to build from.
“These are novel length,” he said of the Warhammer 40,000 novels. “These are not small. But there are so many characters. It takes place over so many thousands of years. There's so much there. The challenge is how do you get in? That's really a brutally difficult adaptation, but it's been so fun for it.”
It’s true: there are hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of official, full-length Warhammer 40,000 novels, produced by Games Workshop’s book business, Black Library. They tell the stories that underpin the tabletop game’s “grim darkness of the far future” setting, touching on everything from the machinations of chaos gods to the trials and tribulations of downtrodden humans. The 41st millennium is an overwhelming setting, one that has become dense with lore over the course of decades. And not much of it makes a great deal of sense, either. Fans must remind themselves, as the unreliable Warhammer 40,000 canon marches on inexorably, that each tale they devour is only delivered from a certain point of view. Indeed, the Emperor himself is perhaps the most unknowable being in the galaxy.
This is why you often see newcomers ask grizzled veterans for a starting point when it comes to Warhammer 40,000 novels. Dan Abnett’s wonderful Eisenhorn series is a popular recommendation, as it follows the inquisitors Gregor Eisenhorn and Gideon Ravenor on a relatively grounded detective story. From there, perhaps dip your toe into the bigger picture moves of the likes of Ultramarines primarch Roboute Guilliman, or dare to delve deep into the foundational Horus Heresy. But whatever you do, don’t force it. Who knows what truly resides in the darkest corners of the lore?
This is Flanagan’s challenge, then: how do you create a Warhammer 40,000 series when the Warhammer 40,000 universe has no obvious entry point? How do you make something accessible for newcomers when you’re adapting a universe that has no real beginning, middle, or end?
I keep coming back to Eisenhorn. Indeed I think Henry Cavill will play Eisenhorn in the Warhammer 40,000 TV show. I wrote about why extensively earlier this year. In short, author Dan Abnett has sort of suggested the series has something to do with Amazon... stuff, and he's sitting on the latest entry while he waits for Games Workshop and everyone else involved to get their ducks in a row.
An Eisenhorn adaptation would, theoretically at least, be tighter in scope than some of the grander Warhammer 40,000 stories, and help keep production manageable. The Eisenhorn Omnibus series does feature Space Marines, but they only make brief and rare appearances. The story focuses heavily on Gregor Eisenhorn and regular humans rather than the giant genetically enhanced warriors.
Hopefully it won’t be too long until we find out.