Borderlands Nonetheless Acquired to Thrive from Its Dangerous Film

It wasn’t that way back that the Borderlands movie got here out in theaters and did uh, Not Great in theaters earlier than coming to VOD three weeks later. Critics and audiences greater than tore into it, and Lionsgate wished to faux it mainly didn’t occur. Nevertheless it apparently wasn’t that a lot of a bust, as a result of the video games’ writer Take-Two obtained to chuckle all the best way to the financial institution.

This week, studios in each the video games and movie industries have been posting their financials for the second quarter of the fiscal 12 months, and each Lionsgate and Take-Two—which acquired Borderlands developer Gearbox in March—mentioned the poorly acquired film, which made $33 million worldwide and value $120 million to make over about five years, a director change, and alleged rewrites. Lionsgate was fairly direct in calling the entire thing an entire mess: “Every little thing that may go incorrect did go incorrect,” mentioned CEO Jon Feltheimer. “It sat on the shelf for too lengthy in the course of the pandemic, and reshoots and rising rates of interest took it outdoors the protection zone of our typical strict monetary fashions. The success of our monetary fashions doesn’t take the place of additionally getting the inventive proper.”

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick additionally dunked on it throughout his firm’s earnings name, politely referring to it as “disappointing.” However whereas it “wasn’t materials” to Take-Two’s outcomes, he mentioned the film obtained individuals to purchase extra Borderlands video games, all of that are on current-gen {hardware}. Sport diversifications usually result in renewed interest within the supply materials and more sales, so Zelnick considers this “an indication that making a film or a tv present primarily based on our very prime quality IP can drive catalogue gross sales, and that may be a very good factor.” If it helps put eyes on the sequence forward of Borderlands 4 subsequent 12 months, he can’t be too mad about it.

Or perhaps he can. The expertise of creating the Borderlands film burned Take-Two sufficient to reaffirm that it ought to be selective in what it lets get tailored. Its BioShock franchise is theoretically getting a film in a number of years, and Zelnick mentioned the corporate “has licensed different titles, and we are going to proceed selectively to take action. However [note the] ever so refined phrase, ‘selectively.’”

[via Deadline and VGC]

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