Take-Two CEO says the 'disappointing' Borderlands movie actually helped sell the games

Ahead of publisher Take-Two Interactive's earnings call, company CEO Strauss Zelnick sat down for an interview with IGN, where he revealed the Borderlands Movie's box office flop translated into more sales of the games.

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Zelnick said to the publication that it's obvious the Borderlands Movie didn't perform as intended, but the marketing for the movie, whether it be bad or not, translated into more sales for the catalog of Borderlands content. According to Zelnick, and, at least from the perspective of Take-Two Interactive, "I don't think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit." Additionally, the Take-Two Interactive CEO said the failure of the movie highlights something the company has mentioned previously: the difficulty of bringing its intellectual property over to another medium.

More specifically, the Take-Two Interactive CEO said back in August to IGN that there is difficulty in correctly bringing gaming IP over to other mediums, and while there is very little risk economically (from Take-Two's perspective) when agreeing to license some IP to a movie, the result of the Borderlands Movie highlights this difficulty Zelnick has warned about.

"Obviously that movie was disappointing," he said. "That said, it actually sold more catalog. So, I don't think it hurt at all, if anything I think it may have helped a little bit. It does highlight something that I've spoken about many times which is the difficulty of bringing our intellectual property to another medium."

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