Fans have been waiting an awfully long time for the “Borderlands” movie to arrive, as the big screen adaption of the Gearbox Software favorite has been in the works for literally years now. The movie finally premiered on the big screen over the weekend. To say that it was an unceremonious debut would be the understatement of the year. Director Eli Roth’s take on the video game franchise is nothing shy of a disaster, ranking as the biggest bomb of 2024 so far.
Lionsgate’s “Borderlands” opened to an estimated $8.8 million at the domestic box office. To make matters much worse, the blockbuster made only an estimated $7.7 million in its debut overseas, bringing its global opening weekend total to $16.5 million. The movie itself carries a budget in the $115 million range, which doesn’t even account for marketing (that cost is said to be in the $30 million range — more on that later). So, this one is in the red with seemingly no way out. Early estimates suggested “Borderlands” needed a miracle to avoid disaster. That miracle never came.
“Borderlands” is now easily the biggest bomb of the year to date, even above the mess that was Sony’s “Madame Web.” It’s early days, but this may end up being one of the biggest flops of all time given its current trajectory. So, what went wrong here? How did Lionsgate let this happen? How did seemingly everything go wrong on a project that had so much going for it on paper? We’re going to go over the biggest reasons why “Borderlands” became a historic bomb. Let’s get into it.
Borderlands failed to impress critics or audiences
This is the biggest elephant in the room, and it’s one that needs to be addressed before talking about anything else regarding “Borderlands” and its lousy performance. As of this writing, Roth’s film has a downright terrible 9% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst-reviewed studio films of the year. It also earned a truly lousy D+ CinemaScore, which is almost unheard of for a blockbuster of this size. /Film’s Bill Bria highlighted the film’s “heavily generic storyline and offensively inoffensive tone” in his 4 out of 10 review of “Borderlands.”
It’s not rocket science. At a time where there are plenty of well reviewed movies out there, including “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Twisters” just to name a couple, there is no reason for the average moviegoer to bother rushing out to a theater to see a movie that has such a stink on it. It’s exceptionally rare to see the vast majority of both critics and audiences united against a film in such a strong way. At best, even those who were interested in seeing the film are likely going to wait until it arrives on streaming. Mixed reviews are one thing, but overcoming such universal negativity is nearly impossible.
Borderlands was a big mess behind the scenes
Borderlands faced unexpectedly stiff competition
Lionsgate, Roth, and lots of people involved are certainly owed more than a little blame for allowing a disaster like “Borderlands” to happen in the first place. That said, nobody can be blamed for facing unexpectedly stiff competition. Sony’s “It Ends With Us” also opened this past weekend with a surprisingly huge $50 million debut. Meanwhile, Marvel’s $1 billion blockbuster “Deadpool & Wolverine” retained the number one spot on the charts for the third weekend in a row. That film is firmly going for the same audience that “Borderlands” was going for, which didn’t help.
To make matters more complicated, “Twisters” has held very strong in the U.S., with the film pulling in another $15 million in its fourth weekend. Neon’s new horror movie “Cuckoo” also debuted over the weekend, with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” and “Longlegs” still hanging around the top 10 as well. Even under the best of circumstances, it was going to be tough for another blockbuster to find a lot of room to breathe on such a crowded weekend.
Lionsgate was conservative with its marketing spend
When it comes to big-budget blockbusters, marketing is an enormous factor in determining success. It was a big part of why “Deadpool & Wolverine” did as well as it did, aside from having Marvel’s good name attached to it. To that end, Lionsgate was pretty conservative with the marketing spend for “Borderlands,” relatively speaking. According to Variety, the studio spent about $30 million on marketing and distribution. For a movie with a $115 million budget, that’s certainly on the low end.
For what it’s worth, Lionsgate recovered around 60% of the film’s production costs by pre-selling overseas rights. In other words, those who purchased the rights in various territories are responsible for marketing the movie in those territories. Lionsgate didn’t need to launch a global campaign. Even so, a $30 million spend will only get a poorly-reviewed movie so far. Did Lionsgate know that it had a dud on its hands? Was it just trying to mitigate risk by not spending too much on a marketing campaign for a blockbuster that was doomed to fail anyhow? That seems likely. In fairness, it does mean the studio will lose less money, but that’s of little consolation given how bad the results are.
Video game adaptations are still tough to crack
Recent years have helped break the video game movie curse, there is no arguing against that. For decades, Hollywood had an impossible time translating these stories in satisfying ways. However, on both the big and small screens, we’ve seen success stories ranging from Prime Video’s “Fallout” to last year’s blockbuster smash “Five Nights at Freddy’s” finding massive success. Even so, video game adaptations are still exceedingly tough to crack, with the misses far outweighing the hits. As a result, “Borderlands” was fighting an uphill battle the whole way.
The formula for success is somewhat elusive, but it often seems to involve having the creators of the game on board in some capacity. It also means having people who understand the source material at the top trying to translate it to the screen. “Five Nights at Freddy’s” wasn’t met with much warmth from critics, but it resonated with fans of the game. That’s a key difference. Mazin proved he could translate the gaming experience with his work on “The Last of Us,” so what went wrong with “Borderlands”? One could perhaps point to the decision to hire Roth to direct the film. One could also point out that Lionsgate’s had very little success in the big-budget arena over the years. Whatever the case, this was an example of Hollywood’s worst sensibilities coming to bear when it comes to video game movies once again.
“Borderlands” is in theaters now.
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