‘Borderlands’ Swaps Director Eli Roth for ‘Deadpool’s Tim Miller Ahead of Reshoots
As Eli Roth prepares to shoot Thanksgiving, he and Lionsgate have recruited Deadpool director Tim Miller to helm two weeks’ worth of reshoots for the long-awaited Borderlands adaptation.
After alarms went off last Saturday that Lionsgate’s Borderlands was in deep and worrying trouble, Deadline was quick to jump in with its own sources, promptly debunking claims of Eli Roth being fired from the (still undated) video game adaptation. It appears the truth is much simpler, with Roth simply bringing in pal Tim Miller to oversee two weeks of action-oriented reshoots while he begins to focus on his next film, Thanksgiving, based on the mock trailer he did for 2007’s Grindhouse alongside Quentin Tarantino.
Regardless, word is that Borderlands isn’t quite there, with two negative test screenings in 2022 putting some serious pressure on the secretive production. Whether Tim Miller’s knack for action filmmaking — even his divisive Terminator: Dark Fate packed quite a punch — can salvage the entire operation remains to be seen, but expectations aren’t super high at the moment despite the promising character teases released in 2021 plus an all-star cast which includes Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black, among others.
The official synopsis for Borderlands, which is not doing a 1:1 adaptation of Gearbox Software’s games, but instead remixing elements, reads as follows:
In Borderlands, Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland (Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other.
Based on the series of games from Gearbox and 2K, the script was penned by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us) and Roth himself. Avi Arad and Ari Arad are producing through their Arad Productions banner, with Erik Feig also producing through PictureStart. The film’s executive producers are Randy Pitchford, executive producer of the hit video game franchise and founder of the Gearbox Entertainment Company, and Strauss Zelnick, chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
