This may not be the first announcement for a movie adaption of the popular first-person shooter, roleplaying franchise, following the announcement in 2015 which didn’t come to much. However, this announcement has come with a lot more details. Eli Roth will be directing alongside producers Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Erik Feig. Randy Pitchford, Gearbox founder, and Strauss Zelnick will serve as executive producers. The film is to be produced using a new script by Craig Mazin. Further than that, there is little detail into when the film will be based. Will it follow the existing story from one of the games or a new original story? Odds are great that, like the games, it will be based on Pandora, the world in which all the franchises games have been set.
The video game movie adaptions genre is still awaiting its first major hit. Several titles have managed decent box office results but there has yet to be a real box office hit. The recent Sonic the Hedgehog movie achieved good box offices sales, good enough to possibly warrant a sequel, at any rate. This is despite its problematic development, when fans mocked the movie’s Sonic the Hedgehog model when it was revealed, leading to a complete redesign of the movie’s blue hero.
Could the Borderlands adaption finally be the hit the genre is waiting for? It’s currently too early to tell. Game adaptions usually fall into the trap of pleasing fans but failing to achieve a wider appeal. Lionsgate has announced that the Borderlands movie will seek to please fans while also drawing in new audiences, but this is far from a new aim and one that most other game to movie adaptions have failed to put into practice. Will they succeed where other have failed? Time will hopefully tell.
