I tried to sit down and watch Ultramarines, Games Workshops' official animated Warhammer 40K film, a few years ago. Made it maybe 15 minutes in. It was awful. Like bad 90's PC game cinematics.
Where official projects fail, however, fan projects can be counted on to succeed. And I don't think I've ever seen a fan project quite like this one.
The Lord Inquisitor is an animated film that, a few of years back, began as a labour of love of just one man, artist and modeller Erasmus Brosdau. He put the trailer you see up top together by himself, an incredible achievement considering it blows the official movie out of the water.
That trailer, though, was from 2011. In the years since, you might be forgiven for thinking the project, originally planned to be an eight-minute clip, fell by the wayside.
Nope. It's since ballooned out to become a planned 40-minute film, and is now the work of a team, including Warhammer 40K authors and helping hands from employees of places like Crytek and Ubisoft.
Below is a more recent trailer, from 2012. As you can see, more hands and eyes on the project means slicker trailers (not to mention better writing than in the first clip, something you can forgive Brosdau since he's an artist, not a writer).
The hope is that a prologue portion of the film can be released for free next year, with the final cut to follow.
You can follow the movie's progress at its official site.