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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 Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.