Borderlands Movie Announced!

Kick some tires and light some fires, Borderlands is coming to the big screen! 

On August 28th Lionsgate Studios, fresh off the resounding success of their multi-million dollar box office draws The Hunger Games and Twilight franchises, announced their planned adaptation of the first-person shooter role playing game produced by Take Two Interactive Software and developed by Gearbox Studios. Set to be produced by father/son team Avi and Ari Arad, the founder of Marvel Studios and president of Arad Productions respectively, Lionsgate seem to be looking for a new tentpole franchise with a built in audience of fans to guarantee their money ball doesn’t stop rolling anytime soon. 

The three Borderlands games released to date centre on the swash-buckling, hyper violent and glory hounding denizens of the arid planet of Pandora. Abandoned by mining corporations seeking alien technology supposedly hidden all across and beneath Pandora’s surface, survival is relegated to the whims of the planets extreme weather conditions, blood thirsty wildlife and homicidally insane population. In each game, the player takes on the role of a ‘Vault Hunter’, seeking fabled cache’s of alien weaponry to immortalise themselves in the stories Pandoran’s tell to keep out the cold, dark night. 

But don’t let the harsh realities of Pandora fool you, Borderlands is far from all doom and gloom. There are annoying, dubstep obsessed robot side kicks, agoraphobic junk dealers, anti-social archeologists, bar maids that speak almost entirely in innuendos and enemies who loudly proclaim they are ‘the conductor of the poop train’ literally exploding from every corner. 

As well as it’s goofy tone and ridiculous weaponry, up to and including shotguns that fire exploding swords, Borderlands is best known for it’s unusual inclusiveness in comparison to many AAA titles. The varied and distinct body types of it’s equally diverse women, gay, bisexual and minority ethnic characters only add to Pandora’s richness of design and grandeur. After the critical and popular maelstrom Mad Max: Fury Road, also famed for its varied casting, maintaining this focus on a wide dynamic of characters can only help the project flourish. 

With Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick promising a ‘bold, provocative no holds barred motion picture phenomenon’ and fans petitioning to get game scribe Anthony Burch on board, the buzz around Borderlands is already as electric, explosive and inflammatory as the weapons its unlikely heroes wield.