THE WILD BUNCH

BORDERLANDS Eli Roth turns sci-fi worldbuilder for a gonzo video-game adaptation with the year's most bonkers cast.

- JORDAN FARLEY

Video-game adaptations have levelled up of late. Arcane, The Last of Us and Fallout all proved that pixel-powered source material doesn’t have to mean an instant game over on screen. The latest game movie gunning for glory is Borderlands, the feature adaption of the Gearbox-developed spaceshooter series that hails from an unlikely source – gore-lord Eli Roth.

‘Obviously, horror is my passion, but I really, really love big, fun sci-fi,’ Roth – the director behind fright-fests Cabin Fever, Hostel and Thanksgiving – tells Teasers. ‘I wanted to make a big, fun, totally insane film – but something with the beauty and style of a film like

The Fifth Element, or even Barbarella. It’s world-building, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. If I was 12 years old and I went to see Borderlands, I’d think this was the greatest movie ever.’

The project began development in 2015, with an early draft of the script penned by TLoU co-creator Craig Mazin, then Roth signed up in 2020 after pitching an adaptation, not a ‘recreation’ of the game, which would necessarily deviate from the source material in some major ways, in service of a better film. ‘I said, “I don’t want [audiences] to be like, ‘Oh, that was a good video-game movie.’” I want them to say, “That was a really fun sciencefiction film, period.”’

Set on the vibrant wasteland world of Pandora,