Take-Two CEO Says Borderlands Movie Bombing 'Didn't Hurt at All'

Like water off a duck's back

When the Borderlands movie bombed on the world stage, it barely managed to scrape back its marketing budget, let alone what was spent securing the likes of Cate Blanchett and Jack Black. But Take-Two Interactive ZEO, Strauss Zelnick, doesn't think it did lasting damage to the video game franchise from which it was adapted.

Zelnick spoke to IGN ahead of the company's Q2 earnings call today. While he admitted "obviously that movie was disappointing," he prefers to focus on the fact that it "actually sold more catalogue". Still, the head honcho isn't worried, believing the Borderlands IP to be resilient: "I don't think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit. It highlights something that I've spoken about many times: the difficulty of bringing our intellectual property to another medium."

In case you missed it, Randy Pitchford, founder and CEO of Gearbox Software, the developer behind Borderlands, memorably compared the studio, following the movie's abysmal launch, to The Beatles, insisting that even arguably the greatest band of all time only had about a 25% hit rate.

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Has the Borderlands franchise's good name been tarnished by association with the movie's poor reception? Let us know in the comments section below.

[source ign.com]

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About Khayl Adam

Khayl Adam is Push Square's roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.

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Comments 10

• 1
• DonkeyFantasy
• 5:03am

It hurt the people who went to watch it

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• Ludacritz
• 5:05am

Randy said what about The Beatles?! HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

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• Nepp67
• 5:16am

Certainly a way to cope with it

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• JokerBoy322
• 5:28am

Riiiiiiight... like when you accident walk into a wall or door and someone sees so you play it off like it didn't even hurt or you meant to do it for the laughs. Then you go and hide and cry the pain away lol.

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• Northern_munkey
• 5:50am

Nah it won't hurt the games any more than tiny Tina's wonderWTF did (personal opinion.) Nobody expected the movie to be an academy award winner and it was what I expected..a silly sci-fi flick with deliberately hammy acting and decent effects. B-movie classic to go with my star crash,battle beyond the stars and death race 2000 section on my wall of shame..

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• NoHope
• 7:21am

Well, it certainly hurts me reading bs like that.

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• nomither6
• 7:44am

i can’t believe it even had a movie tbh

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• Odium
• 56m ago

Randy saying it didn’t hurt just shows how little he respects his own IP. If someone took an IP of mine, even if it was me, and butchered it the way this was and then it bombing the way it did, I would be devastated and would need to reevaluate the way I utilize the IP. Respect the IP and respect the fans that made the IP become the hit it was.

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• Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
• 52m ago

This doesn't say much for the Borderlands franchise then...

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• Bentleyma
• 15m ago

"I don't think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit. It highlights something that I've spoken about many times: the difficulty of bringing our intellectual property to another medium."

He had to spend millions of dollars to find out something that everyone and their mum could of told him for for free.

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