Having taken a side trip into more youthful-skewing entertainment for The House With A Clock In Its Walls, director Eli Roth is headed into game territory for a new movie. He's on to make the film adaptation of hit title Borderlands.
Released by Gearbox Software, the Borderlands series has become one of the most successful in game history, selling more than 57 million units. The game’s basic story focuses on a group of four Vault Hunters, who travel to the distant planet Pandora to hunt down an alien vault that is rumored to contain advanced alien technology. They quickly find themselves battling the local wildlife and bandit population as they attempt to stop the head of a private army from reaching the vault first.
Chernobyl's Craig Mazin wrote the most recent draft of the script, but there's a chance Roth will do some work on it before he actually starts the cameras rolling later this year.
"I’m so excited to dive into the world of Borderlands and I could not be doing it with a better script, producing team, and studio. I have a long, successful history with Lionsgate — I feel like we have grown up together and that everything in my directing career has led to a project of this scale and ambition," Roth says in a statement. "I look forward to bringing my own energy, ideas, and vision to the wild, fun, and endlessly creative world of the game. Randy Pitchford and everyone at Gearbox have been incredibly supportive of my ideas — it really feels like a perfect storm of creators coming together. We are out to make a new classic, one which the fans of the game will love, but also one which will find new audiences globally."
Given Sonic The Hedgehog's recent box office success, it's perhaps not all that surprising that Lionsgate would push this one forward.