You might not have to wait long to see what’s going on with the much-pilloried Borderlands movie starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart for yourself from the comfort of your own couch. The box office bomb is reportedly coming to streaming as early as late August, after less than a month in theaters.
That’s according to The Hollywood Handle and When to Stream (via Gamesradar) which both have Friday, August 30 as the date Borderlands will be available to stream at home from various digital video storefronts. DVD Releases (via Forbes) also has that as the date, with the movie already available to pre-order for $25 on Amazon Prime.
Distributor Lionsgate hasn’t announced an official streaming date for Borderlands yet, but given the video game adaptation’s spectacular failure in theaters, it’s easy to see it coming to streaming in record time. The Eli Roth-directed vehicle for billion-dollar brand destruction debuted to a zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which has only climbed by 10 points among critics in the weeks since release.
Of course, there are plenty of bad movies that still make plenty of money. Borderlands is not one of them. It’s opening box office was $17 million globally, which plummeted by a record-breaking 72 percent in its second weekend. The struggling economics of theaters being what they are, that’s a whole lot of empty seats that could be filled with things like Alien: Romulus and, dare I say, It Ends With Us.
Here’s how Kotaku senior editor Alyssa Mercante described the Borderlands movie in her review:
If you told me Borderlands used AI for its dialogue, I’d believe you without question. Nearly every line that’s uttered with the kind of fake peppiness I’d reserve for my elementary school cheer competitions is either a limp-dicked “edgy” joke that wouldn’t warrant a single Reddit upvote or a cliche phrase like “I’m too old for this shit” and “This has been a really long day.” I could count on one hand the lines that were thoroughly genuine—or at least not dripping with so much snark they were almost sticky. There is no humanity here, just humorless humans.
Hopefully the box-office stink doesn’t linger on the video game series itself. Borderlands has always been a fun and gorgeous RPG shooter, with Borderlands 2 being a real standout and the recent Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands putting a Dungeons & Dragons-flavored tabletop fantasy twist on the loot shooter formula. The Pandora’s Box collection containing every game in the series is still just $37 on Steam.
Meanwhile, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford continues to tease Borderlands 4, a game which was previously internally delayed and seems ripe for an announcement any day now. Like maybe at Gamescom Opening Night Live?