Following a disastrous start, the Borderlands movie has a hard road ahead of it in order to make any profit through the box office and beyond.
Borderlands is already one of the biggest flops of 2024, earning an uninspiring
$8.6 million at the opening domestic box office and currently sitting at a 9% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
While the film is star-studded, with Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis, quality concerns set in shortly after Lionsgate delayed the review embargo.
Despite the big names and established gaming IP, Borderlands couldn’t put up a fight during its opening weekend in theaters and is on pace to lose the studio money.
How Much Has Borderlands Made So Far?
Although it’s in its theatrical journey, Borderlands stood out during its opening weekend for all the wrong reasons.
Borderlands grossed only $8.6 million domestically during its opening weekend and has added less than $2 million thus far internationally, making its global total $10.3 million.
As a widely released film by Lionsgate, the fourth-place start is widely seen as a major flop, evening falling behind Twisters during its fourth weekend.
Below are the overall box office rankings for the weekend of August 9-11, topped by Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine:
Deadpool & Wolverine: $53.8 million
It Ends With Us: $50 million
Twisters: $15 million
Borderlands: $8.6 million
How Borderlands Can Be Profitable
Lionsgate
For a big-budget film like Borderlands to be profitable, it generally needs to earn at least twice its production budget at the global box office, factoring in marketing expenses, which are often less transparent.
Beyond box office earnings, the film will also generate revenue through digital sales, subscription video on demand, and future TV rights.
The issue for Borderlands is that the overall box office haul will work against its eventual home media profits and online interest may be muted as the film received an abysmal D+ CinemaScore from audiences.
Add 20th Century Studios’ Alien: Romulus horror-action flick to an already busy box office mix, and Borderlands could be rejected into further mediocrity.
Will Borderlands Turn a Profit for Lionsgate?
With a reported production budget of $115 million, not including marketing, the film is expected to incur one of the largest box office losses of 2024.
There’s no way around how significant of a flop Borderlands is going to be based on its box office results, becoming a blemish on the booming business of many other video game movie and TV adaptations.
However, there is some hope, as the studio stated (via Forbes) that 60% of its production costs were reportedly covered by international presales.
In this case, a pre-sale involves granting a third-party distributor the rights to a film in a specific territory in exchange for a “minimum guarantee,” which acts as an advance payment.
Even with this guaranteed advance payment, it’s not looking likely for Borderlands to shake to “flop” label it will likely always carry.
In addition, the lack of support from fans of the game and the film’s substantial deviations from the source material further hinder its financial prospects.
Based on its disastrous start, Borderlands‘ estimated range of net profit loss is around $60-$110 million over its lifetime.
Borderlands is now playing in theaters.
