Uh oh, the Borderlands movie is off to an incredibly rough start, as the box office figures point all sign towards a flop.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that Borderlands is a pretty popular series, right? Do we all agree there? It has to be, otherwise the idea of making a movie adaptation would be unthinkable. Said movie has been in the works since 2015, which is always a surefire sign of a hit, and was finally released last week after almost a decade of development. And how was it? Well, I gave it a singular star in my review, because I simply couldn’t find anything to like about it. And it seems that that sentiment is pretty much universal, with the film sitting at a Metacritic critic score of 27/100, and a user score of 2.8 out of 10. So it shouldn’t be any surprise to hear that, as reported by Variety, the film has opened with a painfully low $16.5 million on a $115 million budget.
Domestically it took home $8.8 million, with $7.7 million coming from international sales, painting a picture that quite clearly says “yeah, we’re good thanks.” Variety also notes that just under 60% of production costs for the film were covered by international presales, according to sources anyway, but it’s still a result that is far behind expectations. I think it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be getting a sequel, at least not any time soon – the games will probably have to redeem the series’ image a bit.
