Shooting for the Borderlands movie is more than halfway done, as Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford confirmed in a new behind-the-scenes segment on the film.
Gearbox released a short video tour of the Borderlands movie set during its E3 2021 showcase, featuring brief interviews with director Eli Roth and other members of the film team. During a chat with production executive Emmy Yu and producer Ari Arad, Pitchford touched on the movie’s progress, confirming that “we’re more than halfway done with the shooting, we’re about two-thirds of the way done.”
This update comes just over a week after a batch of set photos matching actors to their characters. These photos were only silhouettes, and we still haven’t seen how these characters actually look in the movie, but it’s clear that the Borderlands film is coming together.
Elsewhere in the behind-the-scenes reel, Roth touched on the chemistry between the cast – which he called “the best cast I’ve ever worked with” – including lead Cate Blanchett, who plays Lilith. “In The House with A Clock in Its Walls, I saw how unbelievably funny she was,” Roth says. “She brought out the great dramatic acting in Jack Black, and Jack brought out the great comedy in Cate. She’s so into it; she wants to understand it from the inside out, what are the powers, where do they come from.”
Roth also revisited his goals for Borderlands’ film debut. “I don’t want to say what we’re filming, but it’s lots of blood, lots of guts, it’s totally bonkers but also very Borderlands,” Roth said of one scene in progress, all the while twirling a replica of the Ruthless Infinity Legendary pistol from the games.
“We want to make a great science-fiction movie,” Roth adds. “We don’t just want to make a great video game adaptation. We want it to be a great sci-fi movie period … We want this to be a gateway drug for the non-Borderlands fans. The great thing about the game is there’s so much to it that you’re telling 80 hours of story and people can live in the world. We have to create a different experience that has to be thrilling in a different way and has all the things that the fans love.”
New Borderlands games are also on the way: here’s how fantasy spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands builds on tabletop inspirations to make something new.