Borderlands
The Borderlands movie is the latest video game adaptation attempting to make a mark in an era where the so-called “curse” of that genre has been broken by other films and shows. That did not go as planned, and now after being panned by critics and audiences, the film has arrived with a problematic fourth place debut at the US box office.
The huge success story of the weekend is Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us, doubling its $25 million budget in the US immediately. The full list for the weekend is as follows:
- Deadpool and Wolverine – $54 million
- It Ends With Us- $50 million
- Twisters – $15.4 million
- Borderlands – $8.8 million
Sure, at least part of this is Borderlands’ competition. Borderlands is debuting alongside a clearly extremely popular hit, and in the wake of two big blockbusters with long tails. But it is impossible to ignore the failings of the film itself, a 10% critic scores and a D+ audience CinemaScore. It is currently one of the worst-reviewed major films of the year.
The film tried a game-ditching PG-13 rating and an original story to appeal to a more general audience. But they were not interested, and hardcore Borderlands fans did not appreciate the many significant departures from the games in terms of storyline, characterization and casting. The film had two high-profile Oscar winners, Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis, and a huge box office draw, Kevin Hart, but did not utilize them to full effect.
Borderlands
The good news for Borderlands is that reportedly 60% of its production costs were covered by international ticket presales, says the studio. Though with a $115 million budget and $30 million in marketing and distribution, it’s an enormously tall order to make that back with such a low premiere like this.
There were well-stated plans that this was meant to be the beginning of a larger onscreen Borderlands universe, which may be the reason so many key franchise characters were missing from this first one, but that seems unlikely to come to pass now. Video game adaptations continue to keep having the most success as streaming series like The Last of Us and Fallout, though kid-focused gaming features like Super Mario Bros. and the Sonic series have done well at the box office.
As for the Borderlands IP, a fourth mainline game in the series has been teased endlessly for a while now, but has not seen an official debut. It’s unlikely this film has affected the plans for that.
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