The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2021–2024
Borderlands: a $120M video-game movie that grossed $33M worldwide
Lionsgate's video-game adaptation cost $120M and opened to $8.6M; it grossed $33M worldwide, and Deadline calculated an $80M loss.
Lionsgate · 2024-08-09
What happened
Borderlands — a live-action film of Gearbox's blockbuster video-game franchise, directed by Eli Roth with an ensemble led by Cate Blanchett — cost $110–120 million to make, with the budget reportedly swelled by reshoots. Lionsgate released it in the United States on August 9, 2024.
It debuted to $8.6 million, finishing fourth for the weekend, and critics rejected it. It closed with $15.5 million domestically and $17.5 million overseas, a worldwide total of $33 million against the $120 million budget.
Deadline's annual cost analysis put the film's net loss at $80 million once all expenses and revenues were counted, one of the biggest bombs of 2024. The failure capped a decade of attempts to turn the looter-shooter franchise into cinema — the game series itself remained profitable, which made the movie's rejection all the more pointed.
Why it happened
- The adaptation bet on the game's name instead of its tone: Borderlands' humor and art style are its identity, and the film abandoned both for a generic action-comedy look.
- The budget grew to $120M through reshoots and a star-heavy cast — for a property whose core audience is young gamers, who stayed away in droves after the early buzz soured.
- Lionsgate treated a niche cult franchise as a wide-audience event film: an $8.6M opening means the marketing never built a mainstream audience, and word of mouth never got a chance.
The lesson
A game's name is not a movie's audience: Borderlands sold its humor and hand-drawn look — a $120M adaptation of a beloved property grossed $33M because it was a different product with the same title.
Sources
- Deadline — Four Fanboy Flicks Bomb Out In Deadline's 2024 Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament
- Wikipedia — Borderlands (film)
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