Eli Roth’s pricey adaptation of the video game franchise, Borderlands, only earned just over $1 million in its thursday previews.
The early box office numbers are starting to roll in for the weekend. While the Blake Lively adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us looks like it might become one of the summer’s biggest sleeper hits with its $7 million preview night, the outlook isn’t quite so rosy for the pricey video game adaptation, Borderlands. According to Deadline’s early box office numbers, it only earned about $1.32 million in its Thursday previews. That suggests a weekend in the teens (at best) for Lionsgate’s big-budget video game adaptation, which seems like it’s struggling to find an audience.
We’ve covered the movie’s long journey to the big screen in a pretty in-depth way here at JoBlo, and while our review was pretty damming (read it here), it’s always a drag when so many talented people come together, and the movie whiffs. It’ll be interesting to see the CinemaScore rating, but according to Deadline, the average audience rating for the film was just 1 1/2 stars. With numbers like that, a single-digit opening weekend (sadly) isn’t out of the question. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s only nabbed a 7% rating, which makes it one of the year’s worst-reviewed films.
But are we being too hard on Roth’s movie? This is where you folks come in. If you happened to see it at a preview screening last night, we want your thoughts in the talkbacks. Is it as bad as they say, or is this a movie that’s just getting a wild amount of hate piled on it for no good reason. We’d be especially interested to hear from avid players of the video games.
In the meantime, Deadpool & Wolverine will crack the $1 billion mark at the global box office this weekend and the magic $500 million mark domestically. Snikt!