It’s been a while since the announcement, and let’s be honest, there hasn’t been much to get excited about lately. The Warhammer 40K TV project is still alive, but it’s crawling along. Updates have been scarce, statements have been vague, and unless you’re the type to parse investor reports for sport, it’s been hard to stay engaged.
But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Amazon and Games Workshop have made quiet, deliberate moves behind the scenes. The full rights deal is signed. Development is officially underway. And we’ve even had a small test broadcast, tucked inside a sci-fi anthology series like someone trying to hide a purity seal in a sock drawer.
The signs are there if you know where to look. And now’s the time to look. This is your full recap. What’s happened, what hasn’t, and what the slow drip of information tells us about what might come next. If you’re rebooting your attention span for this adaptation, or just curious where the hell this thing went, you’re in the right place.
The Initial Announcement (December 2022)
Games Workshop confirmed its partnership with Amazon in December 2022, handing over the global rights to develop Warhammer 40K as a slate of films and TV series. The announcement hit during one of GW’s regular investor updates, but it didn’t take long for the wider fanbase to catch on. For some, this was long-overdue recognition. A sign that 40K was finally breaking into mainstream media with serious backing. For others, it was a warning shot. The fear wasn’t that the setting was too obscure to adapt, it was that someone like Amazon might try to simplify it.
What made people pay attention was the involvement of Henry Cavill. From the outset, he wasn’t just announced as the star, he was also named as an executive producer. Cavill’s credentials as a 40K fan weren’t in question. He’d already built a public reputation as the rare kind of celebrity who could build a Custodes army without a handler explaining what sprues were. That mattered. It made the whole thing feel less like a soulless licensing play and more like a project with some actual weight behind it.
Still, the announcement came with fine print. The deal was described as an “agreement in principle.” That’s legal-speak for: “we all want this to happen, but we haven’t signed the real paperwork yet.” In practice, it meant Amazon and Games Workshop still had to align on who had creative control, who approved what, and how closely the adaptations would follow canon. It also meant there was no showrunner, no writers’ room, no production plan, and no script.
So after the initial burst of excitement – and the usual tidal wave of internet speculation – things went quiet. No new announcements followed in 2023. Games Workshop kept mentioning the deal in their investor communications, usually just to confirm that conversations were “ongoing.” Amazon said nothing. And Cavill, perhaps wisely, stayed silent. For two years, the entire project hovered in the void between concept and execution. A lot of attention, zero output.
Henry Cavill: The Big Name, Still Quiet
Everyone focused on Cavill, and for good reason. At the time of the announcement, he’d just walked away from two major franchises, The Witcher and Superman, and both exits had stirred up plenty of fan debate. He was painted as a man out of sync with studio decisions, someone trying to hold the line on source material while the people writing the cheques chased something else. That narrative worked in his favour when the Warhammer 40K news dropped. Suddenly, here was Cavill taking creative control of something he actually cared about. Not just acting in it but producing it. Shaping it. Protecting it, maybe.
Cavill has never been shy about his hobby. His interviews, social posts, and even casual mentions of the setting over the years have made it clear: this isn’t a new fascination. He paints minis. He reads the lore. He talks about the Emperor without irony. The idea of someone with that level of investment bringing 40K to the screen felt like a win, especially after years of seeing the setting mostly ignored outside of the gaming niche.
But since that initial splash, he’s said next to nothing. No interviews about the project. No convention appearances. No teases. No rumours from set visits or behind-the-scenes chatter. He hasn’t even dropped a throwaway line during other press runs. For a man known to nerd out in public, the silence is noticeable.
What that means is hard to pin down. He’s clearly involved, but the scope of his influence isn’t public. Is he in the writers’ room? Helping pick the showrunner? Reviewing scripts? Sitting in on casting sessions? Reading PowerPoint decks about pacing and tone? It’s all guesswork. Executive producer titles range from hands-on architect to “famous name on a slide,” and nothing confirmed so far tells us which category he’s in.
Still, the important part is that he hasn’t walked away. The project’s been slow, but Cavill’s name is still attached, and there’s been no distancing or quiet changes to the billing. If the adaptation ever does reach the screen, he’ll be standing in front of it. The only question is how much of it will have his fingerprints.
The Project Becomes Real (December 2024)
The actual green light didn’t arrive until December 2024, two full years after the initial announcement. Up to that point, the project had technically existed in limbo. Everyone knew something was in the works, but nothing had been signed that allowed real production to begin. That changed when Games Workshop released an investor update confirming that all legal agreements were now finalised and that the Warhammer 40K screen adaptation had officially moved into development.
This wasn’t second-hand reporting or a rumour passed around on Reddit. It came directly from the company’s financial reporting, worded clearly and unambiguously. For a company that usually hedges its public statements with phrases like “early stages” or “in discussion,” this was a shift. The update confirmed that Amazon and Games Workshop had reached a full creative agreement, with the rights deal locked in and both sides committed to building the project.
In practical terms, this meant that work could finally begin in earnest. Development isn’t filming, it’s the slow, grinding part of production where ideas get broken down, reassembled, and reworked into something that might survive a studio schedule. Writers are hired. Concepts are pitched and discarded. Budgets are outlined. Tone and direction get hammered out, and all the pieces that were just concepts on paper start turning into real things: pilot scripts, character briefs, production timelines.
This was the first real progress since 2022. It meant the adaptation was no longer a vague ambition. It had officially entered the phase where money changes hands, work gets commissioned, and deadlines (even early ones) begin to appear on someone’s calendar. For fans who had all but written it off as vapourware, this was the moment that brought the project back into focus. It’s not fast, but it’s moving.
The Animated Short: And They Shall Know No Fear
At the same time as the development announcement, Amazon quietly released a 15-minute animated short as part of its sci-fi anthology series Secret Level. The episode, titled And They Shall Know No Fear, featured Lieutenant Titus, a character fans will recognise from the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video game series. There was no fanfare. No press push. No teaser trailers or social media blitz. It just appeared, tucked into the middle of a broader anthology run, with little more than a title and a description to give it away.
But for anyone paying attention, it was a big deal. This was the first officially licensed Warhammer 40K story to appear on a major streaming platform. It wasn’t live-action. The animation leaned into a stylised look that avoided hyperrealism and instead focused on mood, motion, and atmosphere. The voice acting was solid. The tone was appropriately grim, with no winks to the camera or out-of-place Marvel-style quips. It didn’t feel like a parody or a simplification. It felt, if not essential, at least legitimate.
The short didn’t reference the live-action series, and there’s no official confirmation that it shares continuity with whatever Cavill is working on. But the timing wasn’t accidental. It looked like a test case, something small Amazon could float to see how it lands with both fans and casual viewers. Think of it as a soft launch, or a pressure check. It let Amazon prove that it could make something recognisably 40K without immediately faceplanting in front of the fandom.
It also told us something important about the working relationship between Amazon and Games Workshop. That short would never have made it to air without sign-off from GW. If nothing else, it showed that the IP holder is open to experimentation as long as it stays within the lines. Whether that flexibility extends to the bigger, live-action project remains to be seen, but it was a rare moment where a 40K adaptation reached a mainstream audience and didn’t immediately fall apart. Quiet or not, it was a step forward.
What We’re Still Missing
There’s still no confirmed showrunner. No supporting cast has been announced beyond Henry Cavill. There’s no production timeline, no working title, no mention of filming locations, and not a single piece of promotional material. No posters, no concept art, no behind-the-scenes stills, nothing. Not even a cryptic tweet. The usual markers that tell you a show is taking shape simply aren’t there yet.
That tells us one thing: this project is still deep in the early phase. Most likely, it’s sitting in the middle of script development and internal planning. Writers are probably outlining pilot episodes and trying to translate forty years of convoluted lore into something coherent enough for a general audience and just faithful enough to avoid being flayed online. Producers are reviewing budgets and timelines. Studio execs are figuring out how much blood and heresy they can actually show on screen without tanking viewership.
Even the sort of low-effort promotional breadcrumb hasn’t materialised. There’s been no sign of costume design, set construction, or anything that would suggest the visual side of the project has kicked off. If concept art exists, it’s locked down. Nothing has leaked. Either the production is being tightly managed, or there simply isn’t that much to leak yet.
This level of silence isn’t unusual for a high-budget genre adaptation. Shows like this tend to stay in the shadows for a long time before anything is announced publicly. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Fans have been sitting in the dark since 2022, and without regular updates, speculation takes over. The gap between “in development” and “in production” can feel endless when there’s no visible progress. Right now, the Warhammer 40K show is still in that gap and unless something breaks soon, it may stay there for a while longer.
When Will It Actually Release?
The greenlight landed in December 2024, which means actual development didn’t start until early 2025 at the earliest. There simply wasn’t enough time left in the year to do anything meaningful between the agreement being signed and the holiday shutdown. So 2025 is where the real work begins—and even then, it’s going to be slow.
This year is almost certainly going to be all pre-production. That means script development, worldbuilding decisions, hiring a showrunner, and assembling a writing team. They’ll be digging into location options, estimating VFX costs, sketching out what a live-action Space Marine might even look like on screen, and figuring out how to shoot a story where the average protagonist is two metres tall and weighs half a tonne in armour. If things move quickly, casting could start late in the year. But anything beyond that – sets, filming, trailers – is a long way off.
Realistically, we’re not seeing anything on-screen before late 2026 and more likely, early/mid-2027. That’s assuming the production goes smoothly, and that Amazon is willing to fast-track what will likely be an expensive, risky project. If the company plays it safer and aims to time the release with a proper marketing campaign or internal strategy shift, 2027 starts to look more likely.
This isn’t unusual. High-concept genre projects like this take time even when they’re based on something simple. Warhammer 40K isn’t simple. You can’t rush it. You can’t strip it down to a basic hero’s journey without losing everything that makes it interesting. You can’t explain the Imperium in five minutes, and you definitely can’t sell this to a generic fantasy or sci-fi audience without making serious choices about tone, violence, and lore.
That’s the challenge Amazon has taken on. Done right, it could be spectacular. Done badly, it’ll be one of the loudest disasters in streaming history. And right now, it’s impossible to tell which way it’s leaning because the real work has only just begun.
So, Is It Still Happening?
Yes, it’s still happening. Games Workshop has publicly confirmed that the deal with Amazon is signed and development is underway. Amazon hasn’t walked away. Cavill’s name is still attached. A short episode has aired under Amazon’s banner with official branding. That alone puts this ahead of dozens of other high-profile adaptations that vanish after a press release and a round of interviews. The machine is moving. Slowly, but moving.
From an industry perspective, that’s real progress. Not fast, not exciting, and certainly not fan-service. But contracts being finalised and development kicking off means the project has cleared the biggest early hurdles: rights management, creative control, and commitment from both sides. The legal and corporate machinery is in place. That matters more than tweets or teaser trailers.
The lack of noise isn’t proof that something’s gone wrong. It’s a symptom of where the project is in its life cycle. This is the long, dull stretch of production. The part that never gets streamed on YouTube or reported in gaming news. It’s writers hammering out outlines. Producers sitting through lore briefings. Endless meetings about tone, pacing, and budget. Whiteboards full of timeline drafts. VFX consultations about how to animate a bolter without it looking like a Nerf gun. It’s the invisible work that makes or breaks these projects, and it almost never gets talked about until it’s done.
So yes, the silence is frustrating. But it’s not failure. Not yet. It’s just the quiet part of the storm.
What to Watch For Next
When something big happens, you’ll know. If this project starts to accelerate, it won’t be subtle. There’ll be a headline. A named showrunner. A casting announcement that triggers 24 hours of internet meltdown. Maybe even leaked concept art or a teaser that gives us something more than a logo and a mood board. Until then, expect more of what we’ve had so far: long stretches of silence, punctuated by dry investor notes and the occasional PR statement that says very little with too many words.
That’s fine. That’s normal. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to sit still.
At Grimdark Future we’ll be tracking every official update, every credible leak, and every semi-useful quote that slips through the cracks. If something moves, we’ll cover it. If something breaks, we’ll talk about it. If nothing happens for months, we’ll find something else worth your time in the meantime. And when the show finally takes shape we’ll be ready to pick it apart properly.
This universe doesn’t move fast. It never has. But it does move. And when it does, we’ll be here.
