I’m Kind Of Amazed By How Little Money Borderlands Has Made

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

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. Like, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny made nearly $384 million worldwide. Sounds like a lot… until you compare that number to its gargantuan budget, which reportedly came in between $294.7 and $387 million, and realize that it didn't come close to getting out of the red. Movies can make wheelbarrows full of money, and still be huge failures because of the steep cost 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 inevitably toxic word of mouth. That didn't happen, and this movie will likely end its theatrical run having made less than half its budget back, if that.

I'm honestly kind of amazed by how badly it's doing. 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?

We are long past the point in time when anybody would have wanted this

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 (a much better movie set in a wasteland), 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. I wasn't expecting it to be good. 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. Barring a miracle, Borderlands will end its run making significantly less than Longlegs, an original horror movie made for less than $10 million, which has netted $90.5 million on the strength of buzzy marketing and good, organic word of mouth. Some other original movies, produced for much less, have been bigger successes than Borderlands: The Beekeeper, Civil War, Trap, Immaculate, and Monkey Man. 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.

As Vince Vaughn recently said on Hot Ones, studios have convinced themselves that it's better to make a bomb playing it safe than to take a risk and flop. In terms of money, an original $100 million movie is the same as an IP $100 million movie. But the studio execs who greenlit Borderlands can claim they were playing by the rules — it's based on successful IP! — and the studio execs who greenlit IF can't, because it was an original movie. But when successful IP can flop this hard, is it actually safe?

You've got me this time, Gearbox.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.

Your comment has not been saved

I’m not surprised. The casting was beyond terrible, they were missing imperative characters, it didn’t follow any of the lore, none of the people involved knew anything about the games besides the “summaries” they were given, it was PG-13, the writing was terrible, Eli Roth makes horrible movies…I could go on.

They tried to jumanji or disney a hard R rated IP. As soon as the cast was announced, anyone who loved this game series, knew that it wouldn't be true to the game. The colorful bad language, ultra violence and visual style where most of the charm, and they had to remove all of it to make it pg13, to reach a wider audience of kids that haven't ever even played the games.

They made a fan service movie that got nothing right about the IP, including everything you say. Fans hate it cause it's clearly wrong and non-fans get lost on too many out of the blue transitions. Just really bad execution.

How could anyone be surprised, it was an obvious DOA at first sight of the casting..then the horribly unfunny trailers.. I mean camone..it was always going to bomb

They make the movies for people who ’ aren’t going to watch it and they ignore my demographic so we can’t relate to the humor or cast. This isn’t puzzling

I love the video game franchise, and I am honestly disappointed that the movie did poorly on the market. I mean, the feature film is good, IMO.

No one else is surprised

My friend and new it was going to be terrible but we went to see it anyway cause we wanted to see how bad it was. The one thing we weren't disappointed in was our disappointment.

I'm not surprised because the last time Borderlands felt like a popular game, with people discussing it online, was 2013 for me. If they made this movie 10-15 years earlier it might've been more successful.

Deadpool & Wolverine has made over $1B and has nothing to actually do with a comic book. None of the MCU movies do. They are just based on comic book characters. Most of the diehard audience members just accept that they are watching another version of their beloved medium... as easy as believing in a multiverse.

There are still some comic trolls that badmouth every film or take umbrage to anything that isn't "how they would have made it" but you can't please everyone.

Gamer trolls are exponentially worse!

If a movie isn't a shot by shot recreation of the cutscenes with a bit of filler to get you from one to the next, the movie is universally panned. No exceptions.

Examples are plenty, as my kids refuse to watch anything game-related, because their online community has already bashed them.

Halo was a good action show. I have never played the games but I like sci-fi. My son is basically like, "that's not how it happened. I hate this."

Super Mario did well because of all the small references and combinations of the Mario games for us that actually played the original games in arcades or a Nintendo. It referenced the games and a little story.

Younger generations of gamers seem to have less imagination and need everything exactly perfect or their world crumbles.

Grow up and enjoy the fact that the game you love was deemed important enough to make a film about. I waited decades for Foundation and don't complain about the changes made in it.

Good luck getting another gaming movie made after Borderlands and Minecraft bomb!

I am one of those people that went to see Borderlands when it opened. I'm not familiar with the game what captured my attention was the cast the scenes that were shot showing the previews for the upcoming movie and I found that more than likely it would be entertaining and fun to watch and that's the mindset that I went to see it with.

Not having prior knowledge of the game or characters I found the movie to be entertaining and fun and interesting in the development of what the plot was. I may have not understood every aspect in how it tied to the game yet I went for entertainment to pull myself out of the drudgery of everyday life and be entertained by a bunch of actors that are known for their skills present something that was entertaining and fun to watch. When we over intellectualize anything we tend to not see a lot of the things that it may have of value because we're too busy trying to I guess make some sense out of something in relation to something else when in reality the basis of any movie is to entertain and take people to places that they've never been and that's exactly what this movie did at least for me and I'm sure for many others that saw it.

And, now I'm more than anything else interested in finding out about the game itself and how it relates to the movie otherwise again I feel bad for those that didn't enjoy it for its presentation and escapism that movies have always provided...

Then don't call it Borderlands. It's as if you took Star Wars and said, OK, Princess Leia will be a thief and everyone will chase around doing stuff unrelated to the Star Wars universe. Might be a good movie, but it's NOT Star Wars!

Valkyrae says that she saw Jason Momoa "mistreat" the Minecraft movie crew when she was filming her cameo.

Twisters has a great cast, but it's mostly a bunch of leads playing second fiddle to Glen Powell

Here's hoping it's more than just sequels and reboots from now on.

A terrible song for a terrible movie.

There's not going to be any Sonic-style tweaking this time.

Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford loves the Borderlands movie cast, but wasn't surprised to see some pushback from fans.