The Borderlands film received generally poor reviews from critics, but that doesn’t always signal a lack of success at the office as many poorly rated films perform just fine. However, that wasn’t the case for the Borderlands movie, which is bombing with only $8.8 million for its opening weekend in the US.
The movie earned $7.7 million from international markets for a global start of $16.5 million. Variety, which supplied the box office numbers, said that figure was “embarrassing.”
The report said about 60% of the Borderlands movie’s production costs have already been made back through pre-sales to international exhibitors. However, it’s still a disappointing result for the film, which carried a reported production budget of $115 million and advertising and distribution costs of about $30 million.
Not only is Borderlands scoring poorly with critics, the film earned a D+ rating on CinemaScore, a platform that measures audience sentiment. It’s become one of the worst-reviewed major films of 2024 and also among the biggest box office bombs of 2024 so far.
The highest-grossing video game movie ever is The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has earned more than $1.3 billion worldwide (and was also a success with critics for the most part). You can see the rest of the best-performing video game movies in the gallery below.
Borderlands came up short despite it being an established, popular IP with a dedicated fanbase, along with a cast of high-profile and acclaimed actors like Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Kevin Hart, and Edgar Ramirez. For more, check out GameSpot’s Borderlands movie review.
Randy Pitchford, the head of Borderlands game developer Gearbox, said the Borderlands video game franchise is unaffected by how the movie performs at the box office. The movie studio, Lionsgate, is the company whose money is at risk, Pitchford point out.
“The money surrounding the movie is the movie studio’s risk, so I’m not really affected by that, except that if the studio loses money it may not want to make another movie (which would be a shame),” he said on social media.
Strauss Zelnick, the head of Gearbox owner Take-Two and a former movie executive himself, urged people to give the film a chance despite its poor reviews.
