Damnatus on IMDB (Warhammer 40k Fan Film)

Heyyy, that's cool.. as of a few months ago, Damnatus, the Warhammer 40k Fan Film, is now listed on IMDB with a full cast and a few reviews.

Too bad it was never officially released. As one of those reviews mention, apparently, it was leaked on Internet. Tsk, tsk, those pesky Internets.



For those not aware, this was a German movie made by a bunch of fans at their own expense. It was shaping up to look like a quality release and their website has some nifty galleries of some of the work they put into it.

The problem they ran into was some sort of crazyness regarding German copyright law. I don't fully understand it, but it seems that if Games Workshop game them the permission to release this film, it would have relinquished the 40k brand into public domain. (Something GW would obviously never do, and we can't fault them for) In addition to that, they couldn't transfer creation rights of the movie to GW either.

Unfortunately, while GW told them "Hold off, we're looking into this." they went ahead with spending money and time to make the movie - admittedly, that was their bad. By the time GW gave them the verdict, the movie was completed and the cast and crew were told their efforts could never see the light of day.

As I understand it, it's actually a better movie than Ultramarines.

(FYI, I will remove any comments directing people to the supposed leak as I don't want a GW ban-hammer coming down on my blog. Please keep it to yourselves or take the risk on your own sites.)


Why post at all about this? *shrug* With all the GW crazyness lately, it reminded me I hadn't checked if there had been any update on the Damnatus project. I thought it great to see the movie listed on IMDB, so those involved would at least get some recognition for their hard work.