Mike Flanagan has discussed the challenges of adapting Warhammer 40,000 into an Amazon TV series, calling it “brutally difficult.”
Flanagan, writer, director and showrunner of a number of much-loved Netflix horror TV shows including The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher, has signed a multi-year deal with Amazon to develop and produce original series for the studio. The first of these is an adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic, Carrie, which recently hit Prime Video. Next up is a Warhammer 40,000 TV show, which will be part of Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe. The former Superman actor is set to star in the show.
Meanwhile, Flanagan has another project many fans can’t wait for him to get to: The Dark Tower. But this adaptation of Stephen King’s much-loved fantasy saga sounds even further away. Indeed, Flanagan admitted over the summer that he’s having a tough time getting a green light for The Dark Tower, despite the fact it’s relatively straight forward in his head.
Warhammer 40,000, however, is not. Speaking on The Process Unlocked, Flanagan explained why adapting Warhammer 40,000 is so much tougher than The Dark Tower.
“I'll tell you, I feel like I'm climbing my adaptation Everest right now, because I've been working — and this is out there so I can talk just barely a little bit about it — but I've been working on Warhammer,” he began.
Flanagan’s approach to adapting The Dark Tower is, straightforwardly, to adapt King’s books in order. “That one I feel like I figured out,” he said. "You do the books.
“Stephen King is genius in how he structures The Dark Tower because he starts this giant worldbuilding potentially, overwhelming story with two people in a landscape without detail. It's the simplest start,” he continued. “It's one of the most perfect lines of any book: 'The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.' It is two characters. There's a clear objective. One is running away, one is pursuing, and it's a desert. There is nothing else to look at. It's so simple and so clean and on top of that foundation, he adds a universe one brick at a time.
“And so that's the way to do it. The problem with the other approaches is people who try to jump in in the middle or people who try to jump in at a different point, because you can't throw an audience face first into this huge universe. It's overwhelming. And King did it right. He walked you in, started with two people and nothing else and walks you in one step at a time. So my adaptation was that, it was just doing the books and doing them in order. And there's little changes you make to fit the the format, but my Dark Tower approach is remarkably faithful. And so 70% of my job is done for me by Steve. So it's not that difficult. You know, the difficult thing is just figuring out how to get in.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/mike-flanagan-explains-why-warhammer-40000-is-a-brutally-difficult-adaptation
