There's a Borderlands Movie and Apparently Cate Blanchett is in it

So here’s some news: apparently there’s a Borderlands movie coming.

That shouldn’t be surprising, and yet, it caught me completely off-guard. Word is, Gearbox is working together with the folks from Lionsgate and director Eli Roth (the guy behind Cabin Fever, Hostel, and others) to bring the Borderlands world to the big screen, accompanied by Emmy-winning screenwriter Craig Mazin, who penned the script earlier this year. This should be less surprising because apparently this is old news – it broke back in February earlier this year and for some reason it flew way under my radar. My bad.

In any case, the reason it’s back in the news today is because word broke that one of the first big-name actresses has finally agreed to work on the project… or at least, that’s what Gearbox says. And the actress in question is none other than nerd darling Cate Blanchett, who had star-making turns in The Lord of the Rings, Thor, and Indiana Jones.

This has yet to be confirmed by Cate’s people, but since Gearbox is the one saying it, there’s probably at least some legitimacy to it, although to be fair Gearbox doesn’t exactly have a stainless record when it comes to honesty.

In either case, can we just take a moment to appreciate how awful this will be? Maybe I’m the one with the problem, but when I think of Borderlands, the only pluses the franchise has had was the fact that it’s a fun co-op shooter: in nearly every other regard, from plot to writing to characters, it’s terrible. Even the environments are boring since Pandora is just a wasteland.

So can you imagine a movie that strips away the only good part of the base material, the gameplay, and replaces it with… the god-awful writing, humor, and characters?

That’s a hard pass for me, dog, but for you diehard fans out there, I’m sure you’re… ‘excited’.