Borderlands emerged as one of the most notable box-office failures of 2024, with the film adaptation of the celebrated video game franchise managing to earn a mere $33 million during its theatrical run. Critics universally condemned the movie, leading to its rapid decline in popularity. In a candid discussion on The Town podcast, Borderlands director Eli Roth shared his insights on the film’s shortcomings, attributing a significant part of its challenges to the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic complicated production in unprecedented ways, affecting everything from filming schedules to the ability to conduct necessary reshoots.
“None of us anticipated how complicated things were gonna be with COVID,” Roth explained. “Not just in terms of what we’re shooting, but then you have to do pick-up shots or reshoots, and you have six people that are all on different sets, and every one of those sets is getting shut down because the cities have opened up, and now there’s a COVID outbreak and it was just like… we couldn’t prep in a room together, I couldn’t be with my stunt people, I couldn’t do pre-vis, everyone’s spread all over the place. You can’t prep a movie on that scale over Zoom, and I think we all thought we could pull it off, and we got our asses handed to us a bit.”
The film experienced significant delays due to the need for reshoots, but at that time, Roth was already engaged in another project, Thanksgiving. Consequently, renowned Deadpool director Tim Miller stepped in to oversee the completion of the film. “[I] was doing Thanksgiving, and it’s also the kind of thing we’re like, ‘Wow, this is the first time I’m going to see a movie sort of being like, OK, I directed this, what happens?’” Roth reflected. “That was kind of an experience like, never had that before. And I remember being… Am I at the point of my career where I’m going to sit down to watch my own movie that says I wrote and directed it, and I really genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen?”
Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer previously commented on the numerous issues faced during production, stating, “On Borderlands, nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It sat on the shelf for too long during the pandemic, and reshoots and rising interest rates took it outside the safety zone of our usual strict financial models.”
Adapted from the popular video game series of the same name, Borderlands features an impressive cast, including Cate Blanchett portraying Lillith, a notorious outlaw who returns to her roots to form a team of unlikely heroes as they embark on a quest to locate the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful figure. The film’s ensemble also boasts Kevin Hart as Roland, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Florian Munteanu as Krieg, Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tannis, and Jack Black lending his voice to the character Claptrap.
Our own Chris Bumbray described the film as a “disaster” that aspires to capture the same magic as Guardians of the Galaxy but ultimately falls short in both charm and vision. Bumbray further remarked that it was “one of the worst big-budget movies I’ve seen in a while” and predicted that it would likely fade from memory within just a few weeks. Yikes. For a deeper dive, you can check out the full review right here.
