Shush up your Claptrap and grab your assorted weaponry with all your wacky damage bonuses, because we’re going vault hunting in Pandora’s Borderlands to find some even better loot! Allegedly. Maybe, actually, as nothing is confirmed just yet.
Sorry to be backpedaling, but that’s exactly what Gearbox Studios’ co-founder did after possibly blowing up Eli Roth’s spot on Twitter earlier today, deleting a tweet that stated the director would be taking on the movie adaptation of the video game series. Yep, it was a strange morning for Randy Pitchford, the guy running the show at game developer Gearbox Studios.
A Borderlands movie has been in the works for over five years at this point, as the project has been languishing since 2015. It was seemingly stalled, too, until this morning, when the now-deleted tweet popped up then disappeared just as quickly. It stated that Lionsgate is co-producing the film, Eli Roth is directing and it announced a chat about the project coming up next week at PAX East.
This seems like a classic case of “Leaked Press Release A Smidge Early” Syndrome. Pitchford isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the video game drawer, after all, and apparently, he doesn’t even know how to use Hootsuite to schedule his posts properly. Granted, this is all speculation, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be snarky about it! Tee hee.
Also, wow. Eli “Box Office Poison” Roth is certainly a choice. Qualms about the man himself aside, as an artist, I really don’t think his directorial style jives well with the series’ well-established aesthetics. Roth, mostly known for his one good movie Cabin Fever and a bunch of other garbage like the Death Wish remake and The Green Inferno, hasn’t had a hit on his hands since, technically, 2007’s Hostel II. His brash personality is probably what got him the job (if he did indeed secure it), certainly not his directorial prowess.
Personally, if I had to pick a director for this, it’d have to be someone with some visual panache. Robert Rodriguez is well-versed in grindhouse aesthetic and has a better grasp on visual effects than Roth does. Or Guillermo del Toro…but I want him to direct most movies, so, that’s moot. I do think, maybe, a narrative-focused Borderlands enterprise could be, possibly, interesting, but if Roth is the one behind the camera, I’m really not expecting anything more than some titties, dick jokes and most likely a dick getting cut off for the lolz.
