The film industry has a history of using inherently geeky things as the inspiration for movies. For years now comics and computer games have been adapted into summer blockbusters, The Lord of The Rings books became one of the most popular film trilogies of all time, and even Dungeons and Dragons has been turned into two (awful) films.

Meanwhile, the exceedingly geeky world of tabletop war games has, somewhat inexplicably, avoided adaptation. Until now.

Games Workshop, the company behind the hugely successful Warhammer and Warhammer 40K games have announced production of a feature length animated film.

The feature, titled Ultramarines will be made by UK based Codex Pictures. According to the company’s website the film “is a 70 minute sci-fi thriller that will use CGI and state-of-the-art animation production techniques“.

Given the popularity of the source material, and the wealth of potential stories to draw upon, it seems bizarre that it’s taken this long for a film, even a straight to DVD one, to go into production.

It’s pretty safe to assume that, if successful, the film will spawn a series of animated sequels. What most fans will presumably be hoping, is that this will eventually lead to a live action film.

Interestingly, the company have created live-action films in the past, and despite their dodgy effects terrible acting and awful dialogue, they’re still quite charming, as the embed below shows.

(article via Live For Films)