As a critic, it’s generally my job to treat everything with grace — but I’m pretty sure that the Borderlands movie, which hit theaters to scathing reviews, doesn’t do well. I’ll take the word of my colleague, PC Gamer writer Joshua Wolens, who sat down and watched the whole thing, calling it “a tasteless mess that no one involved seemed interested in saving” and “an excuse to buy a bucket of popcorn.”
The critical reception seems to have been reflected at the US box office, Diversityreporting that Borderlands earned $8.8 million in its opening weekend in the States. The film cost $115 million to produce and $30 million to market and distribute.
Adding those costs together means Borderlands’ US run this weekend earned him about 6% of what it cost to make. To put that in perspective, he now needs to sell the same number of tickets about 16 times more to break even.
Of course there will be international premieres, and since Forbes reports60% of the production budget has already been covered from pre-sales, which means that there’s about $58 million left (again, counting production and marketing/distribution costs) to be found after the fact before the money starts flowing.
I’d throw in a snarky joke here, but I feel a similar way to watching Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which not only lost Warner Bros. $200 million but, as of this writing, has — let’s see — 86 people playing it on Steam (up from 217 in 24 hours). Which is to say: depressed. Makes me feel depressed.
It’s just frustrating to think about the amount of waste that came out of something like that, especially since the Borderland series seems to have a tendency to skip straightforward dunks. It has a killer aesthetic and, for the most part, gameplay that’s a lot of fun — I put in about 58 hours into Borderlands 3 and its respective DLC.
But other aspects, namely the story and overall direction, have been chronically mismanaged over the years, and it’s depressed to see that seep into the film. I’m starting to understand why HBO’s The Last of Us writer Craig Mazin jumped off the movie train before it could become an unmitigated disaster.
