Frank Spotnitz, The X-Files and The Man in the High Castle exec-producer, has announced a live-action TV series based on Warhammer 40K and a partnership with Games Workshop.
The show, Eisenhorn, is being made by BigLight. The main character is Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn who, with a team of investigators, will take on the aliens, heretics and daemons to try and save humanity from doom.
The Warhammer 40K universe is bleak an dark, set in a future where a huge human empire teeters on the brink of annihilation and a million battles are fought every day.
Games Workshop has over 5,000 retail locations – all of which are ideally placed to whip up interest in Eisenhorn. According to today’s press release, their websites get more than 100 million views a year which makes Games Workshop quite the media empire too.
Emily Feller (Ordinary Lies, Trust Me, Medici) is on board as an exec producer. Dan Abnett is involved too. He told press;
Gregor Eisenhorn is a relentless force in the dark future of the Warhammer universe: a destroyer of daemons and a purger of heretics, implacable, powerful and dedicated. But the appeal to me, from the moment I started writing him, was his complexity. He is not the simple, ruthless hero he appears to be. His battle with the Warp leads him into dark places and forces him to question his duty, his understanding of the Imperium, and his own identity. With Eisenhorn, it’s not just the adventures, and they are certainly vivid: it’s the journey he takes to the very limits of what he is and what it means to be loyal.”
Are you keen to see Warhammer 40K on the small screen?
Uhh, yeah, the Imperium is essentially xenophobic and fascist. Frank Spotnitz is probably the right person to draw a lens around that, I’ll reckon.
After The Man in the High Castle, you mean? Yes. I think that show probably reassured Games Workshop greatly.