Lionsgate CEO On ‘Borderlands’ Bombing: “Everything That Could Go Wrong Did Go Wrong”
deadline.com
When it came to the bombing of Borderlands, among other late summer and fall releases, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer made no bones about why.
  • XeroxCool@lemmy.worldEnglish
    60·
    2 months ago

    “It was a clear case of a cult game failing to find a broader audience.”

    The non-gamers assumed it was about the game. The gamers knew it wasn’t about the game. It failed to find any audience. And a decade too late.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      261·
      2 months ago

      Exact same problem that the Halo show had - they wrote it for the broad audience and hired a bunch of people who didn’t care at all about the source material, and then they casted it for who they thought would be popular. Which of course alienated the core fans and lost the broad audience.

      Instead of catering to the devote fans and who then would encourage the broader audience to go see it with them. Look at Fallout. You can make a good show that the fans will enjoy, who will get others to watch too.

      • ballskicker@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        2 months ago

        I never gave the Fallout games a fair shake until after watching the series. Played 4 and powered through the slow start that had turned me off of it before and ended up really enjoying the game.

        So yeah, I guess you could say I’m something of a statistic myself.

        • caseyweedermanEnglish
          111·
          2 months ago

          Ohh. You are going to love New Vegas. 4 is only like the fifth-best Fallout game.

          • ballskicker@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            A buddy who loves the whole franchise said he thought 3 and New Vegas were the best but the graphics were pretty dated. Now that I’ve actually got enough of a taste of the lore I’ll go back and try those

            • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              5·
              2 months ago

              If you do, I can’t reccomend the Viva New Vegas modpack enough. It’s a wonderful “vanilla-plus” pack that keeps the feeling of the base game while fixing bugs, improving the balance and leveling curve, reintroducing appropriate cut content, and giving it all a consistently good new coat of paint. And it’s not crash prone, which even the base game has trouble with at times.

              I can’t help myself from tinkering further, but it’s the best baseline setup I’ve found since the game released over a decade ago.

              There are also sister packs done by the same team for 3, and Tale of Two Wastelands (another mod that puts 3 into New Vegas’s slightly improved engine, which a lot of people prefer to playing 3 on it’s own). I haven’t used them myself, but they look to be up to the same gold standard.

              • ballskicker@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                3·
                1 month ago

                Sounds like I’ve got my next several weeks sorted then! Thanks for the mod recs, I’m looking forward to those games

                • FenrirIII@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  3·
                  1 month ago

                  Nexus Mods is your new best friend. Their older Nexus Mod Manager still works for all the Fallout games mentioned here and works better than Vortex.

                  Plug: I even made a couple mods for 3 and NV

            • caseyweedermanEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              Oh, yeah, better graphics absolutely do not make a better game. They’re in the “nice to have” category. Some of the best games I’ve played had the worst graphics.
              That said, there must be all kinds of HD texture packs on nexusmods or Steam Workshop or whatever.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      2 months ago

      I’ll never understand the ego that is required to take a beloved ip and go: never read it never played it, don’t wanna know anything about it, here is what I think it should be. Even if it’s good somehow, it’s not what anyone wanted.

    • scutiger@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      By this, they mean “We made a bad movie, and for some strange reason people didn’t want to see it. We’re confused.”

    • Mercuri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      2 months ago

      What a BS excuse. That’s like saying the Dragon Ball movie did bad because it’s a cult show that failed to find a broader audience.

    • Artyom@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      He says, implying all Borderlands fans watched or even wanted this movie in the first place.

  • Mercuri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 month ago

    Guys… I decided to watch Borderlands just to see how bad it was. It’s so very very bad.

    Five minutes in it was already a train wreck. Virtually EVERY role was miscast (or if I’ve been very generous, given bad direction). Most of the acting was so bad I thought Kevin Hart did a GREAT JOB! Half the soundtrack felt like it was pulled from Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

    They re-wrote so much of the story and so many of the characters it was like why even bother getting the IP in the first place?

    And the BIG TWIST was that Lilith was a Siren. You know, something that is absolutely no secret to anyone who’s ever played ANY of the Borderlands games.

    I’m just so absolutely dumbfounded how they could think that any of this was good. But sure, blame it on the “cult game” that’s sold over 77 million copies and had TWO successful game releases after you announced your movie.