Yahoo Finance Amazon to make films based on Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000
Games Workshop has sealed a deal with Amazon to turn its fantasy gaming franchise Warhammer 40,000 into films and television series.
The retailer said on Monday it had agreed terms with Amazon’s content business after first announcing it was in talks last December.
The deal gives Amazon exclusive rights to Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop gaming franchise which is set in a distant future where humans battle aliens and supernatural monsters with high tech weaponry.
Shares in Games Workshop, which runs more than 520 stores at which it sells Warhammer figurines across more than 20 countries, have surged by more than 15pc since talks with Amazon were first announced last year.
Founded in 1975 by three friends, John Peake, Sir Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Games Workshop began its life as a manufacturer of wooden board games.
The trio eventually secured the rights to the American Dungeons & Dragons franchise in the UK and began opening stores selling miniature figures where customers would stay and play as well as buy toys and figurines.
They launched Warhammer, their own franchise, in 1983.
Mr Livingstone, who was knighted in 2022, told The Telegraph last year: “We didn’t hire traditional retailers to work in the shops, we hired people like us.
“They might have looked like Visigoths but they were hugely enthusiastic, and knowledgeable. So they would explain with passion how to play a game, how to paint a miniature [model]. That enthusiasm rubbed off on anyone who walked in through the doors.”
Over the decades Games Workshop has cultivated a fanbase of millions. In its latest annual report it said its customers were “collectors, painters, model builders, gamers, book lovers and much more”.
“And while no two customers engage with Warhammer in exactly the same way, they’re all deeply invested in the rich characters and settings of our IP,” the report said.
Prominent fans include the Home Secretary, James Cleverly, and the actor Henry Cavill, who has said he finds painting the figurines therapeutic and has been linked with a starring role.
Games Workshop benefited from an upswing in demand during the pandemic, as people spent more money on hobbies such as Warhammer during lockdowns, leading to record sales.
As well as greenlighting the production of Warhammer 40,000 films and TV series, the deal gives Amazon the option to licence the rights to other Warhammer franchises further down the line.
Games Workshop will spend 12 months working with Amazon to agree “creative guidelines” for the films and series. Production will only proceed once those guidelines are agreed.
