Ace director Eli Roth is all set to direct a new movie adaptation of the popular video game Borderlands for Lionsgate.
Borderlands is a series of action role-playing first-person shooter video games in a space western science fantasy setting, created by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games for multiple platforms.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Hostel and Cabin Fever filmmaker will be directing off a script from Emmy-winning screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl). “I’m so excited to dive into the world of Borderlands, and I could not be doing it with a better script, producing team and studio,” Roth said in a statement. “I have a long, successful history with Lionsgate — I feel like we have grown up together and that everything in my directing career has led to a project of this scale and ambition.”
The games in Borderlands primarily take place on the planet Pandora. Pandora is believed to be rich with mineral wealth leading several interstellar megacorporations to send colony ships there to capitalize on it, but once they arrive, they find little of value outside of undecipherable alien artifacts from a race known as the Eridians, and numerous native lifeforms make it too dangerous. Many of the corporations abandon the planet, leaving behind their workforce, former prisoners coerced into employment, who take over much of the planet as bandits and raiders.
Lionsgate Motion Picture Group president Nathan Kahane added, “With Eli’s vision and Craig’s screenplay, we believe we have cracked the code on bringing the anarchic world of Borderlands to the big screen in a big way that will be a fresh, compelling and cinematic event for moviegoers and fans of the game.”
Turning hit video games into feature-length trends has been happening with adaptations like Angry Birds and Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Just recently Sonic the Hedgehog.