"Borderlands" didn't exactly blow up the box office in its opening weekend. In fact, director Eli Roth's spacefaring, explosion-filled game adaption was a massive dud. Here's why.
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00:00Borderlands didn't exactly blow up the box office in its opening weekend.
00:05In fact, director Eli Roth's space-faring, explosion-filled game adaptation was a massive
00:10dud.
00:11Here's why.
00:12The early numbers for Borderlands indicate that it's in the red with seemingly no way
00:15out.
00:16On a budget in the range of $115 million, it pulled down just $8.8 million at the domestic
00:22box office.
00:23It only made a dismal $7.7 million in the overseas market, making its total opening
00:28weekend take a measly $16.5 million.
00:32That makes it the biggest bomb of 2024 so far, even beating out Madame Webb.
00:37You have a winning personality, I guess I got yours by mistake.
00:40The pre-release buzz for Borderlands definitely didn't help.
00:43It was basically toxic.
00:45As of the making of this video, it has a downright terrible 9% approval rating from critics on
00:49Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst-reviewed studio films of the year.
00:53It also earned a truly lousy D-plus Cinema score, which is almost unheard of for a blockbuster
00:58of its size.
00:59Slash Films' Bill Brea noted the film's, quote, "...heavily generic storyline and offensively
01:04inoffensive tone in his 4 out of 10 review."
01:07Filmgoers have a lot of well-reviewed movie options to choose from right now — more
01:10on that shortly — so there is no reason for anyone but the most diehard franchise
01:15fans to bother rushing out to a theater to see a movie that has such a stink on it.
01:19It's exceptionally rare to see the vast majority of both critics and audiences so united against
01:24a film.
01:25It's likely that even those who were interested in seeing the film feel pretty comfortable
01:29waiting until it arrives on streaming.
01:32Borderlands has a big budget and an A-list cast, but anyone who kept up with the production
01:36almost certainly saw signs that the project was...troubled.
01:40Filming initially wrapped more than three years ago, in June 2021.
01:43It is exceptionally rare for a blockbuster film to just sit collecting dust for that
01:47amount of time.
01:48In 2023, Tim Miller, director of the original Deadpool, was brought aboard to oversee extensive
01:53reshoots while Roth was busy making Thanksgiving.
01:56Also, screenwriter Craig Mazin, who earned lots of praise for his work on the HBO adaptation
02:01of The Last of Us, reportedly fought to get his name taken off of the film.
02:05That's a bad sign.
02:07That's not to say messy productions can't result in good movies.
02:10World War Z was famously troubled, yet became the biggest zombie movie ever.
02:14That said, more often than not, if there's smoke in these situations, there's going to
02:17be fire.
02:18It would have been a minor miracle if Lionsgate had been able to pull this one together with
02:22all that behind-the-scenes chaos.
02:23How are we going to get through this?
02:27The summer box office picture this year has been pretty diverse, with animated films,
02:31action movies, and horror flicks all performing well.
02:34As we mentioned, moviegoers have a lot of options, and those options clearly pull them
02:38away from Borderlands.
02:40Sony's romantic drama It Ends With Us, which also opened the weekend of August 9th, landed
02:44a surprisingly huge $50 million debut.
02:47Meanwhile, Marvel's $1 billion blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine retained the number
02:51one spot for the third weekend in a row.
02:54It's clearly going for the same audience as Borderlands, which didn't help.
02:57Borderlands actually finished fourth for the weekend, also landing behind Twisters, which
03:01has held very strong in the U.S., pulling in another $15 million in its fourth weekend.
03:07Neon's new horror movie Cuckoo also debuted, with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan's Trap
03:11and Long Legs still hanging around the top ten as well.
03:14Even under the best of circumstances, it was going to be tough for another blockbuster
03:17to find much room to breathe on such a crowded weekend.
03:22Movies don't just sell themselves.
03:23Deadpool and Wolverine may have been a hit no matter what, sure, but the vast marketing
03:27campaign stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman went on to support it is what turned the heat
03:31on the film up to nuclear.
03:33By comparison, the marketing for Borderlands was pretty modest.
03:37According to Variety, the studio spent about $30 million on marketing and distribution.
03:41For a movie with a $115 million budget, that's certainly on the low end.
03:46For what it's worth, Lionsgate recovered around 60 percent of the film's production costs
03:52by pre-selling overseas rights.
03:54In other words, distributors who purchase the rights in various territories are responsible
03:58for marketing the movie in those territories.
04:01Lionsgate didn't need to launch a global campaign.
04:03Even so, a $30 million spend will only get a poorly-reviewed movie so far.
04:08Did Lionsgate know that it had a dud on its hands?
04:10Was it just trying to mitigate risk by not spending too much on a marketing campaign
04:14for a blockbuster that was doomed to fail anyhow?
04:17It does seem like the studio was perhaps looking to cut its losses.
04:21A few well-received projects over the past few years have helped boost the reputation
04:24of video game adaptations, which had long been regarded as subpar.
04:28There's the aforementioned The Last of Us and Prime Video's Fallout series, for example.
04:33And it's not just limited to TV.
04:35Five Nights at Freddy's and the Super Mario Bros. movie were both big successes with film
04:39audiences in 2023, though a little less so with critics.
04:44Even so, video game adaptations are still exceedingly tough to crack, with the misses
04:48far outweighing the hits.
04:49And Borderlands is definitely one of those misses.
04:52The formula for success is somewhat elusive, but it often seems to involve having the creators
04:57of the game on board in a creative role.
04:59It also means having people who understand the source material at the top trying to translate
05:03it to the screen.
05:04Neil Druckmann, who wrote both Last of Us video games, collaborated with Mazin for the
05:08TV adaptation, for example.
05:11Based on the credits, Borderlands didn't seem to have that.
05:13Roth apparently just got the backstory.
05:15Luckily I had the creators to take me through the game in years and years of Borderlands
05:19lore."
05:20It seems this was yet another example of Hollywood's worst sensibilities coming to bear when it
05:24comes to video game movies.