I just finished watching the 3 episodes of Reacher and the final season of Jack Ryan. Which leaves me more confused at the state of show production at Amazon.
Reacher so far has been great, he's not ever belittled or sidelined for a woman to take the spotlight (in fact his nickname is 'the big guy' and a running joke is not to mess with him as he'll hit you like a freight train)
Jack Ryan was more questionable in the beginning, first season was good in proof of concept though that UAV pilot sidestory was unnecessary, 2nd season was weakest with Venezuela. 3rd season really improved from secret Soviet Union plots, using NATO to bait WW3, coup and false flag nukes. 4th season that I just watched would probably be something everyone here would like since the bad guys are NGOs using their fame as cover to run drug, exploitation and terrorist operations with the help of corrupt US officials in Government and CIA. Then we have something like Invincible too which haven't caught the second season yet but heard it's good.
Now I try to counter that with something like Rings of Power or the Wheel of Time and now you get where I'm confused. How can a company that can bring an audience to niche franchises flop SO hard with established well known franchises? The reason I'm MORE concerned than ever is because of this that there finally seems to be movement on a 40k production with Cavill as a producer but if the same people that did Rings of Power are involved, this might be used to bring in the worst thing imaginable: Female space marines..
Is it just which team is working on it as it sounds like after Rings of Power, that team has been largely demoted or how the contracts for adaptation are in place? I've not watched Netflix ever since Cuties was on there but they seem to be sticking a lot closer to the author's intentions with things like One Piece and Quiet on the Western front and been more successful for it so is that the main thing to look out for?
Sorry for long post just TDLR; trying to know how Amazon makes stuff so I know if 40k gets Rings of Power treatment or is actually good.
If I had to say I think it would be two things. First being the negligence of oversight with productions. Amazon is hands off/doesn't care or does care when it comes to spreading a certain message that they allow in their creations. If someone inserts political messages in with Rings of Power for example, that gets a pass because it's something Amazon wants to promote.
That comes back to the 2nd thing where you have a production crew that's not politicized and makes a good product like Reacher, Amazon will still push that out because it's something that people will actually want, a.k.a, what they should be making.
It seems to me like they want to push both markets. This is just like the Roald Dahl rewrite campaign that Penguin did with his books. Say you're going to plagiarize it, release that, ignore backlash, sell compendium of completed works unaltered. Companies know how to market to both sides of the culture war. Rings of Power was promoted as being diverse Tolkien, Reacher is spread via word of mouth because it's unpoliticised.
For 40k I think it'll be good. Cavil has had two times now with Superman and Witcher being at the mercy of people who gave him bad scripts. If he gets that producer role, he has that power to push out bad influence and be true to canon. The question then becomes what does he adapt?
As far as adapting 40k goes, it would be hilarious to see 'If the Emperor had a TTS Device', but that would basically never happen. More realistically, it depends on what they have rights to adapt and what GW's primary goal is with the project. I assume that any and all Black Library stories are fair game to adapt, but maybe some of the authors had/have contracts that specified compensation that GW doesn't want to pay out to do an adaptation.
GW's goal with the adaptation is the real sticking point, though. If they just want something that will drive people to purchase books and models, then some adaptation of one of the various Astartes stories (retconned to include Primaris because fuck you buy biggerer and betterer new marines) would probably be the way to go. Cool and flashy, combat heavy, makes people want to try out the game(s) this is based on is the route there. There are a number of stories but one I always liked was the Space Wolves series about Ragnar Blackmane... and I just looked it up to make sure I was remembering the name correctly and FUCK ME SIDEWAYS THEY TURNED HIM INTO A PRIMARIS?! SO fucking dumb.
Anyways, if they instead want to make something that's a bit more understandable to ease a wider audience into 40k and something that can stand alone a bit better, several of the stories about the Guard would make for reasonably relatable military sci-fi. Gaunt's Ghosts would be a nice pick for something serious, and for something perhaps a touch more lighthearted (insofar as one can do that adapting 40k) adapting Caiaphas Cain would give opportunity for a bit of levity and help introduce some of the other Imperial institutions and Xenos factions since Cain's encountered a wide variety of both.