It’s been announced that Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie – based on the video game franchise of the same name – has cast Cheyenne Jackson and Gina Gershon in the roles of Jakobs and Moxxi, respectively.
It was previously announced that Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Édgar Ramírez, and Jack Black will appear, which is a pretty strong indication of the studio’s faith in the project. Craig Mazin, who penned the Borderlands screenplay, is also acting as a showrunner for HBO’s upcoming adaptation of The Last of Us.
While video game adaptations have been present for a long time in Hollywood, their quality is usually pretty questionable. Lately, however, it feels as though there’s been a shift in the way these IPs are handled by producers.
Once seen as simple cash-ins, it seems as though Hollywood is just now coming round to the idea of handling these stories with care – and it’s beginning to show. The first season of Netflix’s The Witcher was widely enjoyed by fans, and Mortal Kombat‘s recent release shows that video game fans are more than willing to shell out to see their favourite titles on the big screen. There’s also plenty more on the horizon, with a Tom Holland-led Uncharted movie on its way and sequels to the successful Detective Pikachu and Tomb Raider both in development.
The castings of notable comic actors in Kevin Hart and Jack Black is seemingly in keeping with the franchise’s humorous tone, indicating that the film – while apparently not based directly on any of the existing Borderlands titles – will stay relatively true to its source material.
It’s also interesting to note that Borderlands‘ growing cast features Benjamin Byron Davis as Marcus – an actor perhaps best known for voicing Dutch Van der Linde in the Red Dead Redemption franchise – which serves to further blur the lines between these two very different (yet perhaps equally popular) forms of storytelling.
What do you think of video game adaptations? Do you think there’s an upward curve in quality or will they always play second fiddle to their more immersive source material? Let us know in the comments!