Imagine if Mad Max: Fury Road had been realized as an absurdist gross-out comedy focused on gun porn and casual murder. That's what a Borderlands movie ought to look like.
The wildly successful first-person shooter role-playing game, which has spawned a sequel, a spin-off and a "Pre-Sequel" is now headed to theaters under the guidance of Lionsgate and producer Avi Arad. There's not much to say yet on the movie's story, though Variety notes that Lionsgate sees Borderlands as a "tentpole" blockbuster, meaning it's likely to arrive during the spring/summer window.
The game's success is rooted in its smooth underlying gameplay and dazzling, randomly earned weaponry. It's sort of like a blood-soaked slot machine, except instead of pulling a handle repeatedly, you're running around an alien world while shooting monsters and bandits in the face.
The closest we get to a sense of Lionsgate's plans comes from a joint statement delivered by studio co-chairs Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger: "The Borderlands games don’t pull any punches, and we’ll make the movie with the same in-your-face attitude that has made the series a blockbuster mega-franchise."
While that's encouraging to read as a fan, it's hard not to wonder how far the big screen treatment will really go. Borderlands is an M-rated game series, meaning it's not recommended for players under the age of 17. That puts the game's content in line with R-rated movies.
The problem is that R-ratings are a rarity in the realm of summer blockbusters, which aim to bring in the widest audience possible with big-budget effects and lowest common denominator-angled storytelling. Borderlands definitely lends itself to big, epic action sequences -- but take away the crass humor and gore, and you risk coming out with a tame adaptation that fails to deliver, much like most video game adaptations to date.
Borderlands rights-holder Take-Two Interactive seems to be aware of this potential issue, as a statement from CEO and Chairman Strauss Zelnick suggests: "This alliance is ideally positioned to create a bold, provocative, no-holds-barred motion picture phenomenon that will delight Borderlands' current legions of fans and captivate moviegoers around the world."
It remains to be seen how the aspirational talk about serving fans will line up with the reality of turning this movie into a money-maker. But the Borderlands fiction is ripe for adaptation, as Telltale Games' uproariously funny episodic series continues to prove. So try to hang onto some optimism, Borderlands fans -- at least until you're given a reason to feel otherwise.