Terrible Borderlands Movie Still Helped Sell More Games

The Borderlands movie arrived in 2024, after years in development, only to rake in $15 million at the domestic box office. It was an epic flop, only overshadowed later on went Joker: Folie à Deux went “hold my beer” and failed even more spectacularly. At least with Borderlands, there was a video game franchise attached to it that could still reap the rewards of a moment in the spotlight, and according to Take-Two, which now owns Borderlands, that’s exactly what happened.

“Obviously that movie was disappointing,” CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN on Wednesday. “That said, it actually sold more catalog. So, I don’t think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit. It does highlight something that I’ve spoken about many times which is the difficulty of bringing our intellectual property to another medium.”

Despite a star-studded cast and a big marketing campaign, the movie garnered terrible reviews and bombed opening weekend. Production on the film adaptation began way back in 2011, and the final result ended up being loud, chaotic, and somehow still boring. “It is devoid of humanity and personality, despite trying very, very hard to establish that it is quirky,” Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante wrote in her review. “It is the woman with frozen peas on her head in the grocery store aisle—she’s so crazzzzzyy, love her! It should not exist.”

While a critically-acclaimed blockbuster might have done a lot to help catapult the Borderlands franchise to new heights, it’s possible the movie was so bad that a surprising number of people wanted the good version of the sci-fi treasure hunting experience, and so opted to spend the price a theater ticket on the much better games themselves.

Zelnick has spoken in the past about why Take-Two, which also owns Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto, has been so cautious to try to turn those big names into film and TV spin-offs. “Make no mistake about it,” he told Inverse last year, “it is a very risky move, and I’m pretty risk averse with regard to our intellectual property.”

Less risky is a sequel that iterates on an existing formula that’s already proven to be a hit. Borderlands 4 is currently set to launch sometime in 2025. It was officially revealed earlier this year, with a short teaser that nevertheless gave fans a lot to speculate about.