Borderlands
The Borderlands movie premiered as one of the worst-reviewed major movies of the year, settling at a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, but now, the full box office results from its opening weekend are in and it may also produce one of the largest box office losses of the year, compared to its reported budget.
The Borderlands movie is said to have made $8.6 million domestically, arriving in fourth place at the US box office. That total expanded to $9.3 million globally, adding just $722,031 in the regions where it opened.
This is on the back of a budget reported to be between $115 and $145 million between production and marketing. If you’ve seen it, it is not a cheap film given all the VFX required to bring the explosive game series to life. The studio reported that 60% of its production costs were covered by “international ticket presales” but it’s unclear how this is supposed to fit into these totals, as no additional information past these current numbers has appeared. That total would be about $60-70 million, if those presales are indeed added at some point here, but still short of its overall budget.
Most “adult-skewing” games have forgone film adaptations and instead focused on streaming series. That can be live-action like The Last of Us, Fallout, Twisted Metal and Halo. Or it’s animated, like Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners. In theaters, we have seen kid-focused megahits like the Super Mario Bros. movie ($1.3 billion globally) or the Sonic the Hedgehog films ($725 million globally). There was also Detective Pikachu with $450 million.
Borderlands
Still, we also have recent hits like Five Night’s at Freddy’s ($297 million) and Uncharted ($401 million). To a lesser extent, the R-rated Mortal Kombat made $83 million globally.
None of those films reviewed well with critics, but they did with audiences, often fans of the games who were quite pleased, as you can see:
- Uncharted – 40% critics, 90% audience score
- Mortal Kombat – 55% critics, 86% audience score
- Five Nights at Freddy’s – 32% critic score, 87% audience score.
This is the main thing Borderlands lacked, support from tens of millions of lifetime Borderlands players who did not like the substantial changes to the film, among other issues.
With this global opening, it seems nearly impossible for Borderlands to make its money back with no hope of planned future expansions of the franchise. We can track further totals as they come in, including those supposed presales, but an R-rated blockbuster is arriving this weekend, Alien: Romulus, and it seems likely the second week of It Ends With Us and the fourth week of Deadpool and Wolverine will do well.
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