How would you direct a Warhammer 40k movie?

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Why people want this? Isn't it too complex for film? Also, I always found it very interesting but is too much shit, how do I even get into this?

From the point of a Imperial guardsmen, highlighting how disposable everyone is in the 40k universe and how the imperium must always guard from external aswell as internal threats to their civilisation.

there are at least two live action ones

that would work

make it as a pure war movie, with minimum fluff, but with context.

maybe like, during the 13th Dark Crusade, the Battle of Armaggeddon or the Damocles Gulf Crusade.

it could be done, as long as the movie is made as a movie, and not as an homage to 40k

It would have to be a massive franchise deal desu. The easiest way would be to follow an inquisitor or maybe an explorator fleet so that there's room for creative license without shitting on the lore. The Priests of Mars books would probably translate incredibly well to film.

CGI film with the quality of the Resident Evil CGI films. I don't need the graphic to be Warcraft tier, I was balls to the wall battles with rated R violence. Basically, Dawn of War

The guardsman becomes a psyker but hides it from the unit and is tempted to heresy by the voices of the Warp

A documentary about nerds playing the tabletop where I make fun of them and call them degenerates.
245 minutes runtime.

full CGI like all the dawn of war cinematics. Those were kino.

Give it to Zack Snyder

I wouldn't. Now fuck off back to /tg/ you pimply little shit.

this but make it like the last 15 minutes of the Lego Movie where it cuts from a massive battle to four guys sitting in a squalid basement

Start with reading the Horus Heresy novels, you will either really like the first 3 books, or 40k is not for you.

no exposition

initial twenty minutes are full blown war mayhem with sufficient intensity and unrelenting visceral gore that causes people to get up and leave or become violent and lose their minds screaming

then a quieter 30 minutes demonstrating the fanaticism of the imperium

then some planet hopping

then actual plot, demonstrating a day in the life

finally a quiet ending with some intimation of the expanse of the galaxy at war

Depends on the genre. WH40k has possibilities in this regard, mostly depending on which faction you pick as protagonists and which as antagonists.

If you want straight-up blockbuster shit, pick Space Marines and Tyranids as enemies. It will be capeshit-tier and to add some complexity, throw in Genestealer cults so you can have the OMG tweest and betrayal.

Or you can focus on how crappy life is in the Imperium and follow guardsmen. Pretty good story could be had from following a simple citizen whose world is raided by Dark Eldar and he is then conscipted to find their realspace hideout.

Or you can have a dark comedy and there is no race better for this than Orkz. You can basically rip off any movie you want and it will be funny as long as the accent and ork mentality is nailed right.

imperial guardsmen stranded on a death world, slowly being taken out by monsters and shit. Super gory horror. Could have flashbacks for universe building, like a guardsmen spartan upbringing on cadia or catachan.

The lego movie had no excuse to be as good as it was.

>imperial guardsmen

As close to the source material as humanely possible. That way it's complete shit and no one would ever ask for it again.

Death World book.

But it was shit

I always thought the Gaunt's Ghosts novels would work well as an animated TV series. The first season dedicated to explaining the Ghost's founding and fleshing out the important characters (basically the first two novels) and each subsequent season dedicated to their campaign on a particular world. It gives you compelling characters, exposure to a variety of enemies, and lets you see the crazy parts of the Imperium.

The 40K universe is probably too complicated for a movie without something else laying the groundwork for the lore.

Idris Elba?

>first 30 minutes
start with shamans ritually sacrificing themselves
fade to woman giving birth
fade to God Emperor starting the first civilization and visualizations of how the concept of gods came to be from tales of him
cut through time showing the build-up up of Terra and Mars while he watches but does not intervene
Show Terra falling into chaos and the Emperor conquering the earth
Show him working in his lab and the chaos storm taking the Primarchs and scattering them
cut to the Emperor finding Horus, montage others and how they reacted to him
cut to battlefield of Space Marines on the Crusade
Show Horus in thought, hearing the whispers of Chaos
>rest of movie
Horus Heresy begins, ending with the Emperor being entombed in the golden throne

Not have it centered around space marines.

I would purposely make it so mind boggling awful that W40K and GW would quickly end up on the ash heap of history.

Not just "Plan 9/So bad it's good" bad, but "WTF were they thinking?!!?" and "You PLAY THAT SHIT?!?' bad. So bad that every Warhamster out there would burn their splatbooks and bury their figures lest they be lynched. I'm talking "Battlefield Earth" bad.

That's how bad I'd make it.

Just adapt this book.

Just write a script about a battle between UltraMarines vs Necrons or Tyranids or any enemy whose blood isn't red, and change their weapons to vaporization guns.

Center the movie around Imperial Guard characters so that lore concepts are introduced to the audience through their eyes.

Have three big action set-pieces, one at the beginning, one in the middle, and a big finale.

Its really not that hard if you're not autistic and demand a completely faithful adaptation of the Horus Heresy with full-on R-Rated gore

Lowish budget to avoid too much studio interference. R rated. Horror sci-fi action, Space marines on a Space Hulk vs whoever.

If it makes money do a sequel with a slightly bigger scope & budget also set planetside. Again if it makes money expand further.

The Marvel approach of gradually building up rather than blow half a billion dollars on a pile of crud meant to be an epic straight away no one gives a shit about.

A good, faithful 40k movie would need a 300+ million budget and be rated R.
So unless some nerd wins the lottery or other rich 40k fans fund it, I don't see it happening soon or ever.

Well I tend to half ass things, so instead of taking on that daunting project, I'd make "If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device" into a show on Adult Swim instead.

I wouldn't. pleb manchildren.

The problem with that is that from the beginning to end what you described is 50+ books.

montages to get the general point across and lose 99% of the detail, audiences don't have the attention span needed for any more detail than the "fallen son turns on his dad" story. Just the build up of Mars could be an entire HBO series, but no one really gives a fuck, just have a movie establish the 40k universe then move from there

like the god emperor himself , duh ... gawd fucking plebs theses days.

Dredd(2012) is pretty close to what I would want out of a space marine movie. Keep it really narrow in scope. Daily routine of a space marine. Typical reports of heretics and mutants to burn and kill. Turns out to be hidden chaos demon/faction whatever.

This is the best idea here imho. Quads confirm.

Movies only reach 200M + budget because it's all about money laundering.

And bribing people like Downey Jr. to stick around just a little longer to finish out your childish power fantasy

he's getting paid like fifty million for each of the two Infinity War movies

This is just a good idea in general: introduce the franchise as a self-contained story that really only gives us a glance of the bigger universe and story. It needs to be something that can stand on its own, but at the end people, people are curious to see more of the world. No daemons. No Chaos. No deep exposition of the lore. I would probably start with the imperial guard first, but regardless, the first movie should only give us a glimpse of the big picture.

Idris would make a solid Vulkan

>James Purefoy as the Emperor
>Joseph Fiennes as Sanguinius
>Ralph Fiennes as Horus
>Chris Hemsworth as Leman Russ
>Mark Strong as Guilliman
>Joaquinn Phoenix as Fulgrim
>Arnold Vosloo as Magnus

yeah, of course

Also there is the often mentioned Event Horizon as a example of imperial guardsmen going through the warp or something.

You could do a ton of different bite size glimpses into the 40k world while avoiding heavy exposition.

Honestly what is needed is to wait 15-20 years for the CGI from Avatar to become cheap enough to do it right. Then you could actually do the whole thing book by book.

The real issue i see is that to do it properly you can't use living actors, it would take too long both to film and half of them would die of old age. Like, how the fuck do you cast a lead actor for Horus and include in his contract 'PS you can't die until you have done 50 hours of screen time?'

Abbadon would be worse, he shows up in 40K as well so he would need to do like 100+ hours of screen time.

Am I the only one who thinks Starship Troopers 2 felt more 40k than Starship Troopers? It had even more parallels.

>Imperial guard on grimdark world
>fighting the tyranids
>flashlights instead of auto guns
>commissar type character
>psykers play a bigger a role
>gene stealers

You know, parts of that movie were actually not half bad for a direct to DVD sequel.

So, Starship troopers without satire?

Real actors would need a lot of very good CG to look as tall and buff as Marines are. I'd rather go with unknown actors. or preferably go with super expensive next gen full animation.

Everyone would hate that, just like everyone hated Starship Troopers at release because the satire went over their heads.

Animation is never going to take 40k into a film franchise (of course it won't but just in the theoretical sense) and actors could bring a lot to the emotional/dramatical appeal of the setting which it is totally lacking. You would just need clever camera-work and good transitions between cg armour and bodies and the faces. It can be done.

The mobile infantry looked more worn and gritty as well. Everything was pretty clean and sterile in the first movie.

And get whoever designed the exoskeletons for Edge of Tomorrow to make the space marine armor. They understood how make practical props that had mass and realistic articulation. And they used cranes and wires for almost all the stunts.

I'd prefer a CGI computer animated film instead of a CGI laden live action film.

Also, everyone wanting a guardsmen movie to save on costs is fucktarded, the movie won't bring in the big bucks without SPESS MAHREENS no matter how anal you get about hating them.

An Inquisition movie would only work well after the 40k movie franchise gets established.

Still, 3D animated series or movies is still the best bet.

>I'd prefer a CGI computer animated film instead of a CGI laden live action film.

Sure.

3D animation is apalling and no one willingly goes out to watch it, may as well play as game. There's only two viable options and a third epic that would never get made:

>space hulk situation basically avp in 40k
>inquisition-could be space hulk cleansing mission or something more poltically minded
>epic motion picture horus heresy

Primarch drama would sell well, yeah.