Henry Cavill has been kicked around in Hollywood recently. From quitting Netflix’s “The Witcher”, to being fired as Superman after just returning to the role after a long hiatus, he just can’t seem to catch a break.

But it appears things are not all bad for Cavill, as he’s been set to both executively produce and star in (at the time of this writing) an untitled Warhammer 40,000 TV show for Amazon Prime.

For those not in-the-know (or who’ve taken a shower or gone outside the past week) Warhammer 40,000 (or Warhmmer 40k for short) is a tabletop strategy game in which two players buy, assemble, and paint an army of models (the cost of which can match some mortgages) belonging to whatever faction they’re part of and then set them against each other.

What’s so reassuring is that Henry Cavill is famously a huge fan of the tabletop game and an even bigger nerd of the lore. So with him both starring and being an executive producer, he can (hopefully) make sure the series stays loyal to the themes of the source material, with a constant theme of “everything sucks, and we are so screwed” or how the tagline of the entire series eloquently puts it: “In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium there is only war.”

The setting primarily focuses on the Imperium of Man in the previously mentioned 41st millennium. The Imperium itself is the zealotous and xenophobic empire of humanity that pretty much hates anyone that isn’t a human that worships their god exclusively (and even then, only sometimes). 

The deity in question is the God Emperor of Man, the founder of the Imperium. Who was a 10 foot tall, near immortal, human with powerful psychic abilities armed with a sword that’s also on fire (who ironically didn’t want to be worshiped as god). 

After his favorite son, Horus, mortally wounded him in a failed rebellion named “The Horus Heresy”, he was placed on a golden throne on Earth (now renamed Terra) and is being kept alive (just barely) by having at least 1,000 people sacrificed to him every day for the past 10,000 years.

To put it simply, pretty much everyone is one flavor or another of evil, whether it’s fascist humans, the literal forces of hell, undead ancient Egyptian terminators in space, large bugs that want to eat everything, living mushrooms that live to fight, or pompous space elves that are the main cause of most of the problems in the setting. Nobody is good, just lesser shades of evil. 

But what also makes the setting so appealing is just how over-the-top and insane it can be. 

Some examples include but are not limited to: characters wearing a tank worth of armor and yet still being able to run extremely fast; mountain sized mechs that take whole teams of people to operate; and most spaceships being half church, being as long as Rhode Island, and having a name like “Eternal Defiance”, “The Litany of Fury”, “Undying Faith”, or “Deathmonger”. 

The grimdark, insanity, and the over-the-top nature of the setting is a difficult balancing act, and would take someone who truly knows and respects the setting to get right on when transitioning to the screen. 

With that being said, it doesn’t matter how good Henry is in it if the show is written poorly or doesn’t represent the lore. To do this there are three pitfalls the writers need to avoid.

Firstly, don’t make the scale too big, what might work in a novel series might not work on screen. If they make a show focusing on the Horus Heresy and how the Imperium became what it is now, I’m telling you now, it’s not going to work.

The cost to make it alone will be more than some countries’ GDP. That’s not mentioning all the lore the script will have to go over to catch everyone who isn’t a Warhammer fan up-to-speed.

What they need to do is make the story lower stakes, instead of the entire galaxy at stake, just a planet will do. 

Secondly, avoid focusing on the wrong faction. It’s a safe assumption that the show will probably focus on the Imperium as they are not only the largest faction, but they’re also the most popular. 

The writers will also have an easier time introducing the Imperium with them being human; it’s easier for the audience to relate to them compared to alien species or actual demons. 

With that being said, because this is the first show to be released, there’s only two real factions in the Imperium that they could make a show about without it getting too bogged down in lore.

The first is the Imperial guard (or how they’re known in universe, the Astra Militarum, due to it being easier to copyright). 

For those who don’t know the lore, the Imperial Guard are just regular humans told to go kill god while having the 40k equivalent of squirt-gun and t-shirt as their weapon and armor.

With them just being humans, it’ll give the writers more freedom, and allow them to hopefully make characters that the audience can sympathize with. 

Let’s be honest, it’s hard to sympathize with child supersoldiers handcrafted by god, nonchalantly wearing a freight train of armor and wielding machine gun grenade launchers. 

But I’m pretty sure we can all relate to the man about to have a mental breakdown but still charging the enemy while screaming “For the Emperor” because it’s all he knows.

A good example of how this might work, if done well, is a mix of “Starship Troopers” (1997, directed by Paul Verhoeven) and “Band of Brothers” (2001).

The second faction they could focus on is the Inquisition (No. Not the Spanish one, but them showing up would be unexpected.)  In lore Inquisitors are basically space detectives whose job is to root out corruption (whether it be alien, demonic, or heretical), and destroy it.

The way I’d see this working is a mystery. With the main lead (presumably played by Cavill) being an inquisitor trying to root out corruption on a planet only to stumble on a much larger conspiracy. It could be a fun watch, with plenty of twists and turns.

And thirdly no matter what, The Imperium should not be the “good guys.” They can be the protagonists, sure, but in no way are they morally good.

For every scene where the Imperial guard valiantly charges in order to gain 10 feet on a backwater planet that nobody cares about, there should also be a scene of a commissar shooting someone for daring not to run face first into machine gun fire and to persuade his friends that they should learn from their late comrade’s mistake. 

Even with all that, I still think Henry Cavill is the man for the job. He’s shown range in his roles, whether the eternally grumpy Geralt or shining beacon of humanity that is Superman, it’s safe to say he has some range.

If nothing else, he quit “The Witcher” because they started straying too much from the books, so we’ve seen what he’ll do if a product he loves isn’t being properly represented.

If done well, Henry Cavill will fight for something more important than “truth, justice, and the American way,” for the glory of the God-Emperor.