What Went Wrong With BORDERLANDS? Director Eli Roth Opens Up About the Misfire

Borderlands was a complete mess of a film. It should’ve been great as it was an adaptation of a beloved, chaotic video game series with a $100+ million budget and an all-star cast. But, leave it to Eli Roth to screw it up and make a barely-watchable dud that limped to just $33 million at the box office. Eli Roth has now opened up about what he thinks went wrong with the movie. He recently joined Matthew Belloni on The Town podcast, where he got candid about the behind-the-scenes chaos. He explained:“I think none of us anticipated how complicated things were going to be with Covid — not just in terms of what we're shooting. But then you have to do pickup shots or reshoots, and you have six people that are all on different sets, and those sets are getting shut down because the cities have opened up and now there's a Covid outbreak, and ... we couldn't prep in a room together. “I couldn't be with my stunt people. I couldn't do pre-vis. Everyone's spread all over the place, and you can't prep a movie of that scale over Zoom. I think we all thought we could pull it off, and we kind of got our asses handed to us a bit.”Yeah, it makes sense asBorderlands was shot in 2021, deep in the uncertainty of COVID-era filmmaking. Massive productions are already hard enough when everyone’s in the same room. Try pulling off stylized action and big-scale visual storytelling when your team’s scattered across the globe and you're stuck trying to choreograph stunts over Zoom.Then came the reshoots. Roth wasn’t available because he was off making Thanksgiving, so Deadpool director Tim Miller was brought in to finish the job. Add in a pile-up of credited and uncredited writers (including Craig Mazin, who wanted his name taken off entirely), and you’ve got a recipe for a Frankenstein movie.Still, Roth isn’t ducking the blame. He’s not retreating or pointing fingers. He owns it, saying: “You took the money, take it on the chin. I believe that once they pay you, that's part of the deal, [whether] there's creative differences or whatever happens.”Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer previously addressed the film’s failure singling it out as the studios biggest money loser, syaing: "Within our television Group, our unscripted business is feeling the effects of a continuing market correction. “In our film group, the poor box office performance of Borderlands, coupled with softer-than-anticipated results for other releases in the quarter, reflected an environment with less margin for error than ever before."He went on to explain: "Nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong: 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. “Several of our other releases in the quarter, though cushioned by financial models that worked as intended, didn’t live up to either our standards or our projections."Roth’s not torching the studio, either. He says he’d work with Lionsgate again under different circumstances. While I’m not really of fan Roth or a lot of his movies, he does take responisbility, which many filmmakers won’t do these days when they make a crappy movie.

Apr 15, 2025 - 15:40

What Went Wrong With BORDERLANDS? Director Eli Roth Opens Up About the Misfire

Borderlands was a complete mess of a film. It should’ve been great as it was an adaptation of a beloved, chaotic video game series with a $100+ million budget and an all-star cast. But, leave it to Eli Roth to screw it up and make a barely-watchable dud that limped to just $33 million at the box office.

Eli Roth has now opened up about what he thinks went wrong with the movie. He recently joined Matthew Belloni on The Town podcast, where he got candid about the behind-the-scenes chaos. He explained:

“I think none of us anticipated how complicated things were going to be with Covid — not just in terms of what we're shooting. But then you have to do pickup shots or reshoots, and you have six people that are all on different sets, and those sets are getting shut down because the cities have opened up and now there's a Covid outbreak, and ... we couldn't prep in a room together.

“I couldn't be with my stunt people. I couldn't do pre-vis. Everyone's spread all over the place, and you can't prep a movie of that scale over Zoom. I think we all thought we could pull it off, and we kind of got our asses handed to us a bit.”

Yeah, it makes sense asBorderlands was shot in 2021, deep in the uncertainty of COVID-era filmmaking. Massive productions are already hard enough when everyone’s in the same room. Try pulling off stylized action and big-scale visual storytelling when your team’s scattered across the globe and you're stuck trying to choreograph stunts over Zoom.

Then came the reshoots. Roth wasn’t available because he was off making Thanksgiving, so Deadpool director Tim Miller was brought in to finish the job. Add in a pile-up of credited and uncredited writers (including Craig Mazin, who wanted his name taken off entirely), and you’ve got a recipe for a Frankenstein movie.

Still, Roth isn’t ducking the blame. He’s not retreating or pointing fingers. He owns it, saying:

“You took the money, take it on the chin. I believe that once they pay you, that's part of the deal, [whether] there's creative differences or whatever happens.”

Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer previously addressed the film’s failure singling it out as the studios biggest money loser, syaing: "Within our television Group, our unscripted business is feeling the effects of a continuing market correction.

“In our film group, the poor box office performance of Borderlands, coupled with softer-than-anticipated results for other releases in the quarter, reflected an environment with less margin for error than ever before."

He went on to explain: "Nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong: 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.

“Several of our other releases in the quarter, though cushioned by financial models that worked as intended, didn’t live up to either our standards or our projections."

Roth’s not torching the studio, either. He says he’d work with Lionsgate again under different circumstances. While I’m not really of fan Roth or a lot of his movies, he does take responisbility, which many filmmakers won’t do these days when they make a crappy movie.