Borderlands Still Got to Thrive from Its Bad Movie

It wasn’t that agelong agone that the Borderlands movie came retired successful theaters and did uh, Not Great successful theaters earlier coming to VOD three weeks later. Critics and audiences much than tore into it, and Lionsgate wanted to unreal it fundamentally didn’t happen. But it seemingly wasn’t that overmuch of a bust, due to the fact that the games’ steadfast Take-Two got to laughter each the mode to the bank.

This week, studios successful some the games and movie industries person been posting their financials for the 2nd 4th of the fiscal year, and some Lionsgate and Take-Two—which acquired Borderlands developer Gearbox successful March—discussed the poorly received movie, which made $33 cardinal worldwide and outgo $120 cardinal to marque implicit astir five years, a manager change, and alleged rewrites. Lionsgate was beauteous nonstop successful calling the full happening a implicit mess: “Everything that tin spell incorrect did spell wrong,” said CEO Jon Feltheimer. “It sat connected the support for excessively agelong during the pandemic, and reshoots and rising involvement rates took it extracurricular the information portion of our accustomed strict fiscal models. The occurrence of our fiscal models doesn’t instrumentality the spot of besides getting the originative right.”

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick besides dunked connected it during his company’s net call, politely referring to it arsenic “disappointing.” But portion it “wasn’t material” to Take-Two’s results, helium said the movie got radical to bargain much Borderlands games, each of which are connected current-gen hardware. Game adaptations often pb to renewed interest in the root worldly and more sales, truthful Zelnick considers this “a motion that making a movie oregon a tv amusement based connected our precise precocious prime IP tin thrust catalogue sales, and that tin beryllium a bully thing.” If it helps enactment eyes connected the bid up of Borderlands 4 next year, helium can’t beryllium excessively huffy astir it.

Or possibly helium can. The acquisition of making the Borderlands movie burned Take-Two capable to reaffirm that it should beryllium selective successful what it lets get adapted. Its BioShock franchise is theoretically getting a movie successful a fewer years, and Zelnick said the institution “has licensed different titles, and we volition proceed selectively to bash so. But [note the] ever truthful subtle word, ‘selectively.'”

[via Deadline and VGC]

Want much io9 news? Check retired erstwhile to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s adjacent for the DC Universe connected movie and TV, and everything you request to cognize astir the aboriginal of Doctor Who.