CEO of Borderlands parent company: ‘Let’s give the film a chance’

The Borderlands movie is epically awful, and not in a fun, ironic way, either. Critics have dumped all over it, and even audience metascores, which are generally more forgiving, don’t find much to like either. Other than that, Mr. Strauss Zelnick, how was the movie?

“Let’s give the film a chance,” Zelnick, the chief executive of Take-Two Interactive, told IGN. Take-Two is the owner of the Borderlands IP and parent company of its creator, Gearbox Software. And props to IGN for asking Zelnick the question on Thursday, before Zelnick faced investors on matters more consequential.

Zelnick, after praising the effort from an “amazing” cast working on a “phenomenal” intellectual property said, “So, let’s see what audiences have to say.” Presumably, he means the box office figures, which won’t be known until this weekend.

But if he wants to know what some of the user reviews really are saying, over at Rotten Tomatoes we’ve got:

• “The film is just a Flea-Market ripoff of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
• “An absolute disgrace to the game lore. Ruins the opportunity for other games to get a movie/show. None of the producers or actors know anything about the game.
• “Straight money grabber, the cast was clearly not right, and it did not capture the real magic from the borderlands video game.”

And at Metacritic:

• “Never before have I been to a packed theater that was dead silent the entire time outside of the occasional groan. Nobody thought this was funny.”
• “Absolute trash. Going to go down as one of the worst video game adaptations ever.”
• “Terrible casting, poor writing, rushed, and unfunny would be an understatement for this film.”

None of that really matters, at least to Take-Two. Lionsgate and the picture’s producers are the ones on the hook if this flops commercially. “To answer your question, no,” Zelnick said to IGN, “the performance of the film wouldn’t have a financial impact on us or on the franchise one way or the other.”

Except, one hopes, not to license it or any other original IP out for a film adaptation again until all living memory of this one has passed. That’s the lesson Nintendo learned from 1993’s execrable Super Mario Bros., and it took almost 30 years for that franchise to see the big screen again.

On the upside, Borderlands’ critic score at Rotten Tomatoes continues to trend up, considering it started at 0%, hit 3% late yesterday, and is now at 6%. Can it break 10%?

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