Borderlands Movie Director Discusses The Mega-Flop And What Went Wrong

The 2024 Borderlands movie had a cast full of big names, including multiple Oscar winners, and was based on a popular franchise with countless fans. But the film was a critical and commercial disaster. So what happened?

Director Eli Roth told Variety said that the film, which cost a mighty $120 million to produce, was pared back to something that did not line up with his original vision. He said he wants to make things that are "left of center" because this worked for him in the past. However, "As things grow bigger, studios just naturally become more risk averse," he said.

The report said studio executives wanted Borderlands to have a PG-13 rating, and asked for changes to get it. In the end, the finished version of Borderlands was "something that belonged to nobody," Roth said.

“It’s not a kids’ movie, but it’s trying to appeal to everybody. It’s for gamers, but it doesn’t have the violence the gamers want because it can’t be that extreme because it costs too much. You just wind up with a movie that’s neither fish nor fowl," he said.

Roth was not the only director on Borderlands, as Deadpool's Tim Miller came in for the reshoots.

The Borderlands movie starred Cate Blanchett as Lilith and Jack Black as the voice of Claptrap. The film also featured Kevin Hart (Roland), Edgar Ramirez (Atlas), Ariana Greenblatt (Tiny Tina), Florian Munteanu (Kreig), Janina Gavankar (Knoxx), Jamie Lee Curtis (Tannis), and Olivier Richters (Krom).

Roth previously directed Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Knock Knock, while he starred in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. His latest movie is Ice Cream Man, which tells a story of an ice cream truck driver who comes to town, selling kids ice cream that turns them into murderers. The movie, which releases on August 7, is not getting good reviews, but he says it represents the kind of movie he wants to make, unobstructed from studio influence.

He raised the movie's $5.5 million budget and is releasing Ice Cream Man via his own production company, The Horror Section. He said the movie only needs to make about $6 million-$8 million theatrically to turn a profit, in part because he expects it to make about as much when it's released at home.

“Novelists who write stories own the underlying rights, but filmmakers who write a screenplay don’t own the underlying rights, and that always felt like an imbalance to me,” Roth said. “Stephen King owns all of his creations. Why should I create something and then give away ownership?”