The Borderlands movie may have bombed, but it wasn’t a total failure for Take-Two Interactive. Borderlands is one of the biggest franchises in gaming. It has managed to remain strong and relevant since it jumped onto the scene back in 2010 as a massively popular co-op shooter on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. It wasn’t long before we started getting sequels, DLCs, and spin-offs as well as the announcement of a film adaptation. The Borderlands movie would live in development hell for about a decade as it saw multiple writers taking a crack at bringing the beloved video game franchise to life.
The script that would ultimately lead to the film actually getting made was written by someone named Joe Crombie, a writer who has no prior credits and might not even actually exist. It has been speculated that Crombie is a pseudonym for a writer who did not want to be associated with the film because the final product was such a mess. It was believed to be The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin, but Mazin denied these claims. Nevertheless, what came of Borderlands was nothing short of disastrous. The movie flopped at the box office with a worldwide gross of $33 million on a reported budget of over $110 million. The film was completely rejected by critics and fans of the franchise alike as Borderlands landed at a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it not just one of the worst movies of 2024, but one of the worst blockbusters and gaming adaptations ever.
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This was not lost on Take-Two Interactive, the company that owns Borderlands and is pretty picky about adaptations. CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN that he found the result disappointing, but wasn’t too hurt by it as the franchise still benefited elsewhere. Zelnick noted that the release of Borderlands drove a spike in sales for the games, so Take-Two was still able to come away with a bit of a win.
“Obviously that movie was disappointing,” he said. “That said, it actually sold more catalog. So, I don’t think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit. It does highlight something that I’ve spoken about many times which is the difficulty of bringing our intellectual property to another medium.”
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened either. Sales for The Last of Us video games skyrocketed after the TV show begun airing on HBO, allowing PlayStation to welcome a new audience. While some people were obviously interested in experiencing the first game after the show, others ran straight for the sequel so they could find out what happened next in Joel and Ellie’s story without having to wait years for a second season. However, that was a better position for PlayStation as it had critical acclaim and financial success rather than an infamously bad adaptation and some extra sales.
One of Take-Two’s other prominent franchises, BioShock, also has an adaptation in the works at Netflix. It remains to be seen just how that will turn out as it too has had a troubled journey to live-action with multiple versions that have died in development. Zelnick has previously noted that he does not foresee a Grand Theft Auto movie ever happening, as it would mean needing complete creative control over the film from a studio and that would also likely mean financing it themselves. As such, it doesn’t really make sense to do such a thing when Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be an undeniable cash cow that will make more than any movie could ever dream of making.
Take-Two has been burnt on other adaptations in the past including the Max Payne film, a movie that is a far cry from the beloved Rockstar and Remedy shooters. There have been rumblings that another Max Payne adaptation is in the works, possibly for television, but nothing significant has come out of those rumors yet.
As for the future of Borderlands, it seems likely we won’t get a sequel. However, Borderlands 4 is on the way and will release sometime in 2025 for current-gen consoles and PC.