Borderlands opened in theaters last weekend and, though it took the video game adaptation the better part of a decade to reach the big screen, it only took a few days for it to secure its spot as the biggest box office bomb of the year. Usually when we talk about flops, we’re talking about movies that did make a lot of money, just not in relation to their budgets. Movies can make wheelbarrows full of money and still be huge failures because of the steep costs of making and marketing them. This was especially true for Covid productions like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which suffered multiple shutdowns due to the pandemic.
Lionsgate and Gearbox must wish Borderlands was an Indiana Jones 5-style flop, which was what I expected before it was released. Unfortunately, it’s something much worse. Despite its reported $110-120 million budget, Borderlands has so far only made about $18 million globally. The reviews were awful, too, which meant that the best-case scenario was a big opening weekend to make up for the toxic word of mouth.
This is a movie with big stars like Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Cate Blanchett, based on a big video game series. How are there only $18 million worth of people interested in seeing this in the world? I like the Borderlands games and wasn’t excited for the movie — for reasons I outlined here — but I thought somebody would be. The games are popular, with three successful mainline entries, and multiple well-liked spin-offs.
The series has been around since 2009, too, so it seemed like there should have been a bit of cross-generational appeal. And, unlike Furiosa, Borderlands is rated PG-13, which makes it more likely that kids would go see it. So far, none of that has panned out. The movie bombing so hard makes some sense.
Director Eli Roth wasn’t present for the reshoots, writer Craig Mazin took his name off it, and it’s been in post-production for years. But I was expecting the Borderlands IP to carry it a little further. As it is, its failure is making a good case that studios should prioritize original low- and mid-budget movies over big-budget IP. Some other original movies, produced for much less, have been bigger successes than Borderlands.
None of those movies were billion grossers like Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2, but they earned more than they cost to make, and you definitely can’t say the same for Borderlands. In terms of money, an original $100 million movie is the same as an IP $100 million movie. But when successful IP can flop this hard, is it actually safe?
