It’s probably no secret at this point that the Borderlands film, which opened in theatres last week, has not landed with audiences (or anyone, really), but a report from Variety shows just how dire the situation is.
As reported by the outlet, the film opened abysmally and took in just $4 million USD (Forbes puts the weekend total at $8.8 million USD), across more than 3000 locations, including higher-value sales from luxury or large-format theatres like IMAX, which falls massively short of its $115 million USD production budget.
It’s little surprise that punters, even dedicated Borderlands fans, weren’t flocking to cinemas to see Borderlands on day one, with the early critical reception painting a grim picture of the final product. The movie is sitting on a Metacritic rating of 27/100 (making it one of the worst-reviewed video game adaptations of all time) and a shocking 0% according to the “Top Critics” on Rotten Tomatoes.
The outlet reports that Lionsgate has “financially shielded itself a bit by recouping nearly 60% of production costs via international presales,” but there’s no getting around the fact that the film has landed with all the grace of a greased-up CL4P-TP unit.
Despite the high-profile cast which includes the likes of Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershiwn, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, and a fairly-popular video game IP, the film has been dogged by reports of behind-the-scenes woes in the four years since it was (re)announced with Eli Roth in the director’s chair including last-minute reshoots with a new director, and even before then it’d changed drastically from a mature-rated original concept to the romp that it is now.
All is not lost for the Borderlands franchise though, with the announcement of a new mainline game coming “sooner rather than later,” according to founder of (the now 2K-owned) Gearbox and part-time magician, Randy Pitchford.
