The Borderlands movie was very, very, very bad. So bad that it ended its theatrical run after generating a mere $31 million globally, which is nothing compared to the roughly $115 million production budget. Indeed, it’s barely enough to cover the $30 million marketing cost. So it’s quite generous of Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to call it only “disappointing” rather than a crime against cinema.
Chatting to IGN prior to yesterday’s Take-Two earnings call, Zelnick was able to find a silver lining. “Obviously that movie was disappointing. That said, it actually sold more catalogue. 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.”
Zelnick is broadly pretty cautious about adaptations, considering them major risks that could harm the games they’re based on—at least if they flop. But it looks like that’s not been the case with Borderlands. The series is one of the main contributors to Take-Two’s net bookings of $1.47 billion, and the player numbers for each game saw a sharp bump upon the arrival of the atrocious film.
It’s an almost impressive result for a movie that we called “Tasteless mush that no one involved seemed interested in saving.” When I’ve made the questionable decision to watch some dreck, I don’t usually end up asking “Where can I find more of this slop?” But all these sales aren’t necessarily coming from people who just experienced one of the year’s worst movies. Its launch, and all the marketing around it, undoubtedly generated more attention for the series even among those who had the good sense not to waste money on a ticket.
Zelnick’s comments are in stark contrast to what he said upon the film’s release, when he was still in promotion mode. “Let’s give the film a chance,” Zelnick told IGN. “A lot of people worked really hard on it. The underlying intellectual property is phenomenal, the cast is amazing, I think the look and feel is really terrific. So let’s see what audiences have to say.”
That strategy didn’t quite pan out. But while the movie couldn’t get bums on seats, among those who went to see it the reaction was certainly more favourable than the critical consensus would suggest. While the critic score is sitting at a dire 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score is significantly higher: 51%. Utter madness.
Regardless, I doubt we’ll be seeing a sequel. Borderlands 4, on the other hand, is still on its way and expected to appear in 2025.
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