After an excruciatingly long string of failures, video game adaptations have finally started to the corner in recent years. Arcane, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Last of Us – these are just a few examples of video game adaptations done right, and now Lionsgate is taking a swing of its own with a movie based on the best-selling Borderlands games.
I am not totally sold on this adaptation by the trailer, but Borderlands is certainly as ripe as any game franchise for a movie or TV show. The worlds of these bombastic, cartoonish first-person shooters are filled with fun, over-the-top, and memorable characters, from the unstable thirteen-year-old explosives expert Tiny Tina to the surprisingly empathetic antagonist of Borderlands 2, Handsome Jack. The movie will bring many of those characters to life.
As you will see in the trailer below, Borderlands stars Cate Blanchett as the bounty hunter Lilith, Kevin Hart as the mercenary Roland, Jack Black as the robot Claptrap, Ariana Greenblatt as the aforementioned Tiny Tina, and Florian Munteanu as the Psycho Krieg:
The movie follows Lilith (Blanchett) as she returns to her chaotic home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), who runs one of the most powerful corporations in the universe. Along the way, she teams up with a group of misfits, and during their adventure, they uncover one of Pandora’s biggest secrets.
Borderlands was directed by Eli Roth (Hostel), who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Crombie. The movie actually wrapped filming in June 2021, but Tim Miller (Deadpool) directed two weeks of reshoots in early 2023. Additionally, Craig Mazin (The Last of Us) wrote a script for the movie, but eventually removed his name from the project altogether.
After all that turmoil, Borderlands will finally be released in theaters on August 9, 2024.
