Borderlands creator Randy Pitchford was hands-off on Borderlands movie: 'I'm not a filmmaker'

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says that he didn't have a ton of creative control over the Borderlands movie despite being executive producer on the project.

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At a time video game adaptations like The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros Movie, Minecraft, and the recent Fallout TV show are all finding big success, there's one film that missed the mark completely: The ill-fated Borderlands movie.

Unlike its peers, the Borderlands film was a commercial and critical flop. It was plagued by production issues, with director and co-writer Eli Roth being absent for a good portion of the film, forcing reshoots from Deadpool director Tim Miller. So what went wrong? Why isn't the movie more like the games? Interestingly enough, there wasn't a lot of creative input from series creator Randy Pitchford.

In a recent interview with Insider Gaming, Gearbox CEO and Borderlands creator Randy Pitchford basically said he didn't have much involvement with the movie when it comes to direction.

Pitchford also says he wouldn't want to be a creative lead in another Borderlands movie adaptation, even if it meant trying to "fix" the previous film. Pitchford's job is making games, and as he's said many times now, Gearbox has "been making Borderlands for 20 years, and we've become pretty good at it."

When asked if he'd make another Borderlands movie where he had more creative control, Pitchford said:

"I think that would be a mistake because I'm not a filmmaker. I've seen projects where people with IP get full creative [control] and - I've been on the other side of it!

"I did a James Bond game back in the day with Electronic Arts and we're two weeks away from shopping, and the James Bond people said, you know, 'We don't think James Bond should be so violent. How about we just take all the guns out of the game?'

"I don't want to be that guy. Whoever the experts are in the medium, do the best you can. You definitely know better than me. It's hard enough as it is."

Meanwhile, Borderlands 4 is set to release next month on September 12 on consoles and PC, with an October launch set for the Switch 2. Pitchford is highly optimistic on the game's success and expects Borderlands 4 to sell around 6 million copies at launch.