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Borderlands movie flounders with $16.5m opening weekend

Borderlands movie flounders with $16.5m opening weekend

The recently-released Borderlands film is off to a weak start, making just $16.5 million in its opening weekend. 

That's according to Variety, which reports that the movie made this figure off of $8.8 million from ticket sales in the United States and another $7.7 million from international sales. Studio sources claim that 60 per cent of the film's production costs were covered by international pre-sales. 

For context, Borderlands' production budget is estimated to be around $115 million, with another $30 million shelled out on marketing and distribution. Ticket sales to date cover just 14.3 per cent of the film's production costs. 60 per cent my arse. 

As reported by IGN, the CEO of Borderlands publisher – and the new owner of franchise developer Gearbox – Strauss Zelnick said that he isn't concerned about the negative reviews that the film received. 

"Let's give the film a chance," he said. 

"A lot of people worked really hard on it. The underlying intellectual property is phenomenal, the cast is amazing, I think the look and feel is really terrific. So let's see what audiences have to say. But to answer your question, no, the performance of the film wouldn't have a financial impact on us or on the franchise one way or another."

Borderlands received a three per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Forbes-Calvin is a freelance writer and photographer, mostly operating within the games industry. Over his career, he has written for the likes of MCV, Eurogamer, GamesIndustry.biz, The Observer, VGC and Esquire. That's on top of writing books for Dark Horse on RuneScape, Assassin's Creed, Dead Island 2 and more.