Eli Roth believes "we got our asses handed to us" on Borderlands
The doomed would-be blockbuster is a rarity in this day and age: A video game adaptation starring Jack Black that failed.
Photo Credit: Katalin Vermes (Lionsgate)
Eli Roth’s trip through the Piss Wash in Borderlands didn’t do anyone any favors. After a production where “nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” according to Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer, the movie bottomed out in theaters. “It sat on the shelf for too long during the pandemic, and reshoots and rising interest rates took it outside the safety zone of our usual strict financial models,” Feltheimer continued. Director Eli Roth concurs.
Appearing on Matthew Belloni’s The Town podcast [via IndieWire], Roth avoids pointing fingers because “someone’s going to look bad, and usually it’s just the director.” Instead, Roth explains the bizarre experience of seeing a movie he directed and not knowing what’s going to happen in it because, as he says in the interview, he was making Thanksgiving when Tim Miller was directing reshoots. “That was kind of an experience like, never had that before,” he said. “And I remember being, am I at the point of my career where I’m going to sit down to watch my own movie that says I wrote and directed it, and I really genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen?”
