Randy Pitchford Says Borderlands Movie Flop Won’t Stop Future Adaptations

Randy Pitchford on Borderlands Movie.

The Borderlands movie, which hit theaters in August last year, was supposed to be a wild ride through Pandora. Instead, it turned into one of the most criticized video game adaptations in recent memory. The film stumbled hard at the box office, received brutal reviews, and even left long-time fans wondering how it all went so wrong.

But here’s the thing—despite the movie’s crash-and-burn, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford isn’t giving up on expanding the Borderlands universe beyond gaming. In fact, he’s more open than ever to seeing different creators take their shot at the franchise, even if it means not every attempt lands perfectly.

Speaking with The Gamer, Pitchford reflected on the failure with a mix of humor and optimism. He joked, “It would have been way worse if I directed it. I’m not a filmmaker. Eli Roth is an awesome filmmaker. I promise you, if I directed that movie, it’d be a disaster.”

Instead of gatekeeping, Pitchford says his approach is about letting talented people experiment with the Borderlands brand. “There’s a lot of cool people that have the capability and resources, and want to take their time and energy to play in the Borderlands space. And I think it’s cool to let that happen,” he explained.

His philosophy is simple: keep swinging. “We don’t always succeed, but we’ve got to keep swinging,” he said. Pitchford even compared the situation to music, saying, “I love the Beatles, and there’s lots of Beatles music I just absolutely can’t listen to. Should we say, ‘You made an unlistenable song, therefore make no more music’? That’s not the attitude. I’m glad you tried something. Please make more.”

Interestingly, he wasn’t just talking about films. Pitchford even highlighted a recent Borderlands cookbook, admitting he was skeptical at first but ended up being excited about it.

On the other hand, Eli Roth, who directed the film, later admitted that COVID-19 restrictions made production a nightmare. On The Town podcast, Roth said, “We couldn’t prep in a room together, I couldn’t be with my stunt people, I couldn’t do pre-visualization, everyone’s spread all over the place… You can’t prep a movie on that scale over Zoom.” He even revealed that due to scheduling conflicts, Deadpool’s Tim Miller stepped in for reshoots and the final edit—meaning Roth didn’t see the final cut before release.

When the movie eventually dropped, the results spoke for themselves. Despite a star-studded cast including Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a dreadful 10%. One critic described it as “lifeless, unfunny, and visually repulsive.” It opened with just $4 million across 3,125 theaters before being quietly moved onto streaming services. Fans were equally harsh, blasting the changes to beloved characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, and Lilith.

Still, it wasn’t all bad news. According to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, the film actually helped boost Borderlands game sales, which softened the blow a little.

And now, attention is shifting back to the main event. Borderlands 4 officially launches September 12 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, with a Nintendo Switch 2 release following on October 3. After all the chaos around the movie, the series is returning to where it truly shines—video games.