Director, producer, and actor Eli Roth’s extensive and stacked filmography is nothing to sneeze at, but they can’t all be winners.
The horror icon appeared on an episode of the podcast “The Town” to promote his immersive new media studio, The Horror Section. Still, after some pressure from interviewers, the filmmaker aired some grievances about his now-infamous adaptation of the dystopic video game franchise Borderlands.
The Gearbox game-based flick, which hit theaters last August, was a colossal loss for Lionsgate. Despite a price tag of nearly $150 million, the silver-screen production only brought in about $33 million following a global release. On its opening day, the Cate Blanchett-led flick only generated $4 million across more than 3,000 theaters.
Like a storm cloud, abysmal reviews and a wince-worthy Rotten Tomatoes score overshadowed most audience anticipation and hype upon its release. Borderlands‘ poor performance ultimately cost Lionsgate around $115 million. With the widespread success of other video game adaptations in cinemas and streaming services, Borderlands‘ poor performance felt like an outlier.
In his podcast appearance, the filmmaker and “Splat Pack” member opened up about Borderlands‘ performance, saying COVID-19 protocol negatively impacted production:
“None of us anticipated how complicated things were gonna be with COVID. 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 a— handed to us a bit.”
Roth revealed he didn’t know what to expect when he got to check out the finished product. At that time, he’d moved onto another project. “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?” he explained. Deadpool‘s Tim Miller handled Borderlands‘ reshoots after Roth’s departure.
The game series’ next release hits home consoles on September 23, but only time will tell if the movie’s sub-par performance will impact consumer interest in the upcoming game.
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A lifelong gamer raised on classic titles like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Croc, Stephanie brings her expertise of gaming and pop culture to deliver unique, refreshing views on the world of video games, complete with references to absurd and obscure media.
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