In recent years, the infamous video game adaptation curse has been broken on the small screen with a slew of surprisingly stellar series like The Last Of Us, Fallout, and The Witcher. On the big screen however, despite the box office success of feature fare such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights At Freddy's, we're still awaiting a real gamer and critic uniting humdinger. Hostel helmsman Eli Roth is looking to provide just that however with his take on Gearbox Studios' space western first-person shooter Borderlands. And armed with an all-star cast (Cate Blanchett! Kevin Hart! Jack Black!), some serious Guardians Of The Galaxy vibes, and the promise of Blanchett getting to go full Escape From New York Kurt Russell with her take on the franchise's gunslinging icon Lilith, he may yet do it. The eye-popping final trailer for the summer blockbuster certainly looks the part at least. Check it out:
When Empire spoke to Blanchett about Borderlands for this month's issue of the magazine, the TÁR star revealed how she had gotten "really absorbed" into the world of Pandora (no, not that one), Lilith, and all that the series' universe entails. And honestly, it's not hard to see why. This latest look at Roth's film promises a bright, breezy, banterous romp as Blanchett's bounty hunter Lilith leads a ragtag crew on a missing daughter mission amidst the hostile, wackadoodle wilds of her home planet Pandora (still not that one). Cue the introduction proper of Jack Black's Claptrap, a better look at Florian Munteanu’s Drax-meets-Groot feeling Krieg, plenty of Atlas blaster action, some unfortunate high-speed urine-related shenanigans, and a lovely little final-reel reveal of Tiny Tina's (Ariana Greenblatt) beloved bunny Mushy Snugglebites.
Here's the official synopsis: "Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous bounty hunter with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home, Pandora, the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Ramírez), the universe’s most powerful S.O.B. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits – Roland (Hart), a seasoned mercenary on a mission; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound protector; Tannis (Curtis), the oddball scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap (Black), a wiseass robot. Together, these unlikely heroes must battle an alien species and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other."
Will Roth's long-gestating sci-fi blockbuster finally break the video game movie curse once and for all? We'll find out when we head off to Pandora (for the final time, 100% NOT that one) with Borderlands on 9 August.