With comic book adaptations conquered as a genre in the last decade and now ubiquitous, Hollywood’s dabbling in the video game adaptation pool has picked up in recent years. After Sonic the Hedgehog‘s record-breaking opening weekend for a video game adaptation, we can expect getting dormant projects into production will take on renewed priority for some studios.
One long-gestating project has been Borderlands, which has been in development in some form or another since 2015. Today, Lionsgate announced that they’d finally found their director: Eli Roth. Roth shared his excitement in a statement with the announcement:
“I’m so excited to dive into the world of Borderlands and I could not be doing it with a better script, producing team, and studio. I have a long, successful history with Lionsgate – I feel like we have grown up together and that everything in my directing career has led to a project of this scale and ambition. I look forward to bringing my own energy, ideas, and vision to the wild, fun, and endlessly creative world of the game. Randy Pitchford and everyone at Gearbox have been incredibly supportive of my ideas – it really feels like a perfect storm of creators coming together. We are out to make a new classic, one which the fans of the game will love, but also one which will find new audiences globally.”
That history with Lionsgate was established back in 2002 with Cabin Fever, Roth’s first feature and the movie that put him on the map as a new horror filmmaker to watch. That was followed by ultraviolent Hostel and Hostel: Part II and Knock Knock. Lionsgate launched Roth’s career and Roth established Lionsgate as a studio that put out inventive horror titles.
Though Roth has been focused more on producing than directing in recent years, Borderlands could be an excellent fit for him. The video game series from Gearbox Software and publisher 2K embraces a tongue-in-cheek, irreverent sense of humor and vivid, visceral gameplay that fits Roth’s style as a filmmaker. The games revolve around “Vault Hunters,” on the post-apocalyptic planet of Pandora. The treasure hunters must fight off mutants, marauders, and psychotically violent enemies in a Mad Max-style world in order to find The Vault, a mythical hidden cache rumored to hold advanced alien technology.
Roth will have plenty of help making sure his adaptation remains true to the spirit of Borderlands: Randy Pitchford, executive producer of the video game franchise and Gearbox Software founder, will be executive producing along with Strauss Zelnick, chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive. Avi Arad and Ari Arad will also be producing under the Arad Pictures banner (Spider-Man fans will certainly have thoughts on that), as well as Erik Feig through his Picturestart banner. The most recent draft of the script was written by Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin, who just won two Emmys for that series.
“I’m incredibly proud we can bring this beloved video game to theaters for our fans around the world,” Pitchford said in a statement. “Eli and Craig, already accomplished and remarkable visionaries, will be amazing stewards of Gearbox’s innovative Borderlands characters and stories.”
Production is expected to begin on Borderlands sometime later this year.
