UPDATE: The trailer is now online. I have some thoughts about this one. It doesn’t look as bad as the on-set drama entailed. I really like the visual style of the film. Roth (and Miller) are clearly taking a page of out the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ notebook.
EARLIER: Eli Roth’s “Borderlands,” a film adaptation of a video game he co-wrote with Craig Mazin, has been in post-production for lord knows how long.
At least there’s a release date (August 9) and it’s been confirmed that a trailer will be released tomorrow — confirming the existence of this film. A small 9-second teaser was also unveiled.
Reshoots for “Borderlands” happened in early Summer 2022 with Gary Ross hired for rewrites. The movie was test-screened in November and that led to Lionsgate calling for more work to be done on the film.
In January 2023, there was a report of Roth having been replaced by Tim Miller (“Deadpool”) for additional reshoots on the film, with Zak Olkewicz scribing new pages for Miller.
Then it was rumored that original screenwriter Mazin had removed his name from the project, and he would be going under the pseudonym Joe Crombie. Mazin has denied this, but his name isn’t attached to the movie anymore.
Other writers who were hired to work on the film Include Aaron Berg, Oren Uziel, Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Zak Olkewicz, Chris Bremner and … Sam Levinson!
Cate Blanchett stars in “Borderlands”. Filming had originally wrapped on the film in June of 2021 and then she went straight into production for “TÁR” in the fall. The rest of the cast includes Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis.
On paper, it wasn’t supposed to be the disaster that it’s become. I’m not entirely sure if this is a case of studio interference or a filmmaker being in over his head with the source material, but there are some major red flags stamped all over this movie.