Artist and decades-long fan of the game, Victor Hardy looks at new plans for a Warhammer 40K-inspired television show.
In an effort to match the success of shows such as Netflix’s The Witcher, and to compete with the platform’s planned Magic: The Gathering series, Games Workshop looks set to bring its own Warhammer 40K television series to the small screen. An award-winning artist and decades-long fan of the game, Victor Hardy, from Austin, Texas, takes a closer look at the plans.
Last week, Netflix announced that its fantasy show, The Witcher, based on the book series of the same name, had drawn in viewers on more than 75 million accounts in its first four weeks of streaming on the platform.
It comes as little surprise, then, says artist and decades-long Warhammer 40K enthusiast Victor Hardy, that the game’s makers are now in talks to create their own television series. “The show, it’s believed, will follow the Warhammer 40K Eisenhorn novels,” suggests Hardy, “in which an Imperial Inquisitor known as Gregor Eisenhorn, the novel series’ main character, sets out to seek and destroy demons and heretics.”
Published between May 2001 and February 2018, the Eisenhorn series’ four novels, he goes on to explain, are titled Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus, and The Magos. “Authored by Dan Abnett, it seems to be the general consensus that these four books will form the basis of Games Workshop’s planned Warhammer 40K TV show,” adds Hardy, speaking from his office in the Texas state capital of Austin.
Games Workshop is the brand behind the global phenomenon which is Warhammer 40K, an internationally renowned tabletop or miniature wargame first launched in 1987. Austin-based artist Victor Hardy is one of just many millions of Warhammer 40K players around the world, many of whom, he suggests, are likely to be eagerly anticipating further news of Games Workshop’s planned television series.
Victor Hardy first encountered the game in the early 1990s when he and his university friends attended an event called Texas Con. Buying a copy of the game there and then, Hardy and his friends soon began playing on their dorm room floor. “The rest,” he says, “is history.”
While it’s understood that no production contracts have yet been signed, progress on Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K TV show is thought to be gathering pace. Games Workshop’s external partners have, it’s believed, already taken steps to ensure that the series will remain true to its IP.
“It’s all sounding very promising,” adds Hardy, wrapping up, “and, particularly based on the Eisenhorn novels, set within the dystopian 41st millennium, the series should represent a commercial success for all involved upon it’s hopeful, eventual release.”
