Fill the cannons with stuffed animals and watch the fluff fly as Eli Roth’s Borderlands takes the Lionsgate stage at CinemaCon! The annual entertainment event is in full swing after yesterday’s Warner Bros. panel and reveal of Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux trailer. With film and television fans fired up about upcoming releases, Lionsgate is ready to take them to a wasteland where kooky characters try to kill each other, and a fabled vault of riches awaits.
The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin wrote the initial screenplay for Borderlands but removed his name from the project after the script was rewritten by Roth, Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Joe Crombie, Chris Bremner, and Sam Levinson. Zak Olkewicz wrote scenes for Miller during the reshoots. Elements from drafts Aaron Berg and Oren Uziel wrote before Mazin have reportedly made their way into the film as well. So there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen on this one.
During the Lionsgate panel at CinemaCon, the studio screened an extended trailer for the crowd. JoBlo’s editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, says the footage gives Guardians of the Galaxy vibes, with non-stop ’70s needle drops. The action makes for a fun, heavily comedic sci-fi romp.
When Eli Roth took the stage, he said he made Borderlands in the vein of all the movies he loved as a kid, like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Mad Max. Regarding Cate Blanchett, Roth says he wanted to remove the conductor stick from her hand and replace it with a flamethrower. He said she was down because Escape from New York is one of her favorite movies.
When Ariana Greenblatt joined Roth on stage, Lionsgate was clearly proud to have her on the project, recognizing her immense talent. Chris says she looks quite funny in the movie while playing Tiny Tina. Eli Roth was sold on her when she auditioned and said Natalie Portman in The Professional was one of her favorite roles. He ended up hooking her up with movies like My Dinner with Andre and Andy Warhol’s Empire – originally just to f*ck with her, but she ended up loving them. On set, Roth was also always blasting Michael McDonald’s music
The film stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Edgar Ramirez, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Haley Bennett, Olivier Richters, Gina Gershon, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Bobby Lee, Ryann Redmond, Penn Jillette, and Janina Gavankar, who plays “a new, key character” called Commander Knoxx, someone who has not been in the video games. Jack Black provides the voice of the robot Claptrap.
Here’s the synopsis: “Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Ramirez). Lilith allies with an unexpected team – Roland (Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other.”
Borderlands is produced by Arad Productions’ Avi Arad and Ari Arad, along with PICTURESTART’s Erik Feig. Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford serves as executive producer with Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two Interactive. James Myers and Aaron Edmonds are overseeing the project for Lionsgate. At the same time, Emmy Yu does the same for Arad Productions, and Lucy Kitada and Royce Reeves-Darby are overseeing at PICTURESTART.