‘You Can’t Plan a Movie of This Scale on Zoom’: ‘Borderlands’ Director Explains Film Adaptation’s Failure

The comedy action film Borderlands, based on the shooter series of the same name from Gearbox Software, was rejected by viewers and flopped at the box office, but what went wrong? The film’s director Eli Roth answers.

Image Source: Lionsgate

According to Roth, the COVID-19 pandemic has had the biggest impact on the quality of Borderlands. The restrictions affected not only filming, but many other processes in the production of the film.

Roth lamented, “None of us had any idea how difficult it was going to be with COVID… We couldn’t get together as a team, I couldn’t meet with the stunt guys or do pre-visualization — everyone was scattered around the world.”

«”You can’t plan a movie of this scale over Zoom. We thought we could, and we ended up screwing up a little bit,” the director concluded on a recent episode of The Town podcast.

Due to scheduling conflicts, Roth was forced to hand over the director’s chair during the final stages of Borderlands’ production to Deadpool director Tim Miller and did not have any involvement in the final cut of the film.

«Am I at the point in my career where I sit down to watch a movie that I wrote and directed and have no idea what’s in store for me?” Roth asks.

The film Borderlands was released in August 2024. The adaptation earned mostly negative reviews and demonstrated a humiliating start at the global box office, according to Variety: $16.5 million with a budget of $145 million.