Borderlands had a rough time with critics and did not set the box office alight, and now it is heading to streaming just three weeks after its release.
The long-awaited feature film adaptation of the video game series hit cinemas on August 9, and follows the outlaw Lilith as she returns to the place she grew up to form an alliance with a team of misfits in order to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe.
It currently sits on a lowly 10% score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and has so far accrued only $18.6million (£14.3million) at the global box office, against a budget of over $120million.
It will now be released onto digital platforms on August 30, just three weeks after its theatrical release, an extremely fast turnaround, signifying an attempt to minimise damages.
The movie was first announced as far back as 2015, and was later confirmed to star Cate Blanchett as Lilith and Russian boxer-turned-actor Florian Munteanu as Krieg. The cast also includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart and Jack Black.
Filming eventually began in 2021, with Eli Roth (Hostel, Grindhouse) directing a script written by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. Deadpool’s Tim Miller later stepped in to helm two weeks of reshoots last year.
From the get-go, the word of mouth on the film was poor, with early reviews describing it as “borderline unwatchable”, “bland”, “uninspired” and “a huge misfire”.
NME’s own two-star review of the film stated: “One of the big issues comes with Claptrap, a mechanical sidekick with verbal diarrhoea. Rivalling The Phantom Menace’s Jar Jar Binks as one of the most grating characters ever to appear in a movie, he practically spoils every scene he’s in. At least Roth (and Miller) deliver some punchy action sequences, including one great chase through Pandora’s canyons. But as the film lurches into the final third, there’s little emotional sustenance to keep you going. Just one yawn-worthy twist and some dud CGI. Avoid.”
Despite the reviews, the CEO of Take-Two, the company that owns the IP, urged people to “give the film a chance”.
“A lot of people worked really hard on it,” Strauss Zelnick said. “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.”
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