Reviews for the Borderlands movie are in and they are far from glowing. The CEO of Take-Two, the company that owns the IP, wants everyone to “give the film a chance.”
In an interview with IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said: “Let’s give the film a chance. 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.”
Borderlands is currently sat at just nine per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has been panned for its lacklustre characters and poor use of the world the games created. Rendy Jones wrote: “Borderlands is what happens when you order Guardians of the Galaxy off Temu.”
Zelnick also added that “no, the performance of the film wouldn’t have a financial impact on us or on the franchise one way or another.” This is apparently because there is little economic impact when licensing a video game IP to a film studio.
While there may be little negative associated with a video game film doing badly, positive reception to video game films and series can greatly help boost game sales. Cyberpunk 2077 saw a resurgence in sales when the Edgerunners anime, set in the same world, came to Netflix.
Take-Two purchased Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment back in March 2024 after already publishing several of the series’ games and working on the film. In May, Take-Two shut down some of its development studios and laid off hundreds of its workers.
Take-Two owns Rockstar, the studio behind Grand Theft Auto 5 and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6. A former Rockstar employee said: “I don’t think it is going to be wildly different from GTA 5. I think maybe people might be a little disappointed on the first day.”
In other news, a huge Fallout: London update is on the way and it should fix stability issues and add more material to the overhaul mod.
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