Borderlands, the video game series that defined the looter-shooter genre, is gearing up to get its own cinematic universe — and it's about time. All six core games in the series are hugely popular by fans for their fantasy lore and quirky characters, which you better believe will make their on-screen debut with them. The upcoming film directed by Eli Roth Of privilege.
There's still a way to go before the film hits theaters this summer. Meanwhile, IGN sat down with Roth and Randy Pitchford, founder of Gearbox Entertainment and the film's executive producer, to talk all things Borderlands ahead of the first official trailer being released tomorrow. You can watch an exclusive sneak peek of the trailer via the player above or the embed below.
And if that wasn't enough, IGN can also exclusively reveal the new Borderlands movie poster, seen below.
From the way Pitchford and Ruth interact, even on a video call, you would think they were brothers. Both exude the same fun-loving goofiness that makes Borderlands, well, Borderlands. For me, the best example of this was the way the two creators kept interrupting each other with comedic anecdotes about Their time in the group.
But jokes aside, the two get along well professionally which bodes well for this video game adaptation. Roth was given extensive creative freedom on the project while Pitchford was on hand as a resource to provide deeper insight into the original series.
“It's obviously Randy's baby, his brainchild, everyone's brainchild,” Roth said. “You're entering a world that's so beloved and the fans are so die-hard that you think, 'Okay, well, I really don't want to screw this up.'
Fortunately, Pitchford was open to almost everything. Roth recalls how Pitchford was receptive to the idea of keeping Claptrap alive and enjoyed the Cabin Fever director's various suggestions about how the robot could fire bullets: “Is it like a tail going up and… are they little rabbit pellets?”
In fact, it's a blessing that this adaptation happened, and it's a strong reflection of Pitchford's faith in Roth as a director. Since the beginning of his career in the games industry, Pitchford said he has been turning down requests to turn his studio's work into a film. Ari Arad, who is now a producer on the upcoming Borderlands film, came to Pitchford with several iterations of the script before the deal was sealed.
“Finally, we were playing League of Legends together one day, Ari and I. He was the support and I was the ADC,” Pitchford explained. “We were talking in chat, like in Discord, about maybe showing a movie while playing.”
(In an ironic twist, the Gearbox Entertainment founder explained that he was playing Caitlyn, who he said was “completely stolen from Mad Moxxi from Borderlands, by the Riot team's full, convenient admission.”)
From there, the two began playing video games together frequently, which gave Pitchford the confidence to finally sign on to develop a film adaptation of the Borderlands series. (So I guess business deals don't happen on the golf course anymore.)
Like the game, the upcoming film will be set on the fictional planet Pandora in an action-packed adventure featuring some of the series' most beloved characters. In this all-new installment of the video game series, viewers will see red-headed outlaw Lilith team up with a team of unlikely heroes to locate a missing girl who could change the fate of the universe.
“At a certain point, you just have to choose, ‘This is our character, this is the story we’re going to take, and let’s make the best character we can,’” Roth told me, thinking about the process of deciding on characters. He will appear in the next movie.
Since the film doesn't fit into the video game series, the creative team behind Borderlands had the freedom to choose from a unique cast of characters across the franchise – some of whom don't appear until later in the original story.
The film features a star-studded cast of performers led by Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett as Lilith along with Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Jack Black as the voice of Claptrap, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tanis, Kevin Hart as Roland, and Florian Munteanu as . Craig and Gina Gershon as Moxxi.
Other additions to the full cast include Edgar Ramirez, Bobby Lee, Janina Gavankar, Olivier Richters, Cheyenne Jackson, Benjamin Byron Davis, Charles Babalola, Stephen Boyer, Ryan Redmond, Paola Andrea Placido, and more.
“I was like, ‘Find the weirdest, most bizarre people.’ We’ll put them in the movie. Everyone loved it,” Roth said.
Roth and Pitchford highlight how some of these actors were persuaded to say “yes.” Obviously, we had to know what made someone like Blanchett pull the trigger on a project like this, and the answer is, frankly, heart-warming.
In our conversation, Roth likened the Tarr actor to one of the three greatest actresses in history. Their working relationship goes back to the director's 2018 fantasy film, The House with a Clock in its Walls, in which Blanchett starred alongside Black. So, when it came time to figure out who would be the right hero for the Borderlands cast, there was no doubt in Roth's mind that the Oscar winner was the best choice.
“I think with me, she has permission to get a little weird and a little crazy, because it's like, 'Okay, it's Eli.'” “It's like, ‘Let's go have fun,'” Roth said. “But she's obviously very serious about her character.”
For Curtis, the decision to join the cast was largely driven by her gamer daughter, a fan of the Borderlands franchise, who said “‘Mom, you have to do this movie,’” Pitchford recalls.
In Black's case, the roots run deeper than that. In 2012, he brought his son to E3 when Borderlands 2 premiered. Black asked Pitchford for a demo of the game, and the Gearbox founder told him he would have to play Claptrap if a film adaptation of the series was to be made. Naturally, the Nacho Libre star readily agreed.
“Whether you've played Borderlands or not, it's a fun movie. It's a really fun movie,” Pitchford said.
Borderlands will be released in US theaters by Lionsgate on August 9, 2024.
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