Borderlands movie flops at the box office, one of the worst-reviewed blockbusters in years

The high-budget, star-studded Borderlands film currently in theaters could be the most ill-conceived video-game to-movie adaptions to date, with many calling it a flop - one of the biggest in Hollywood history. With a reported $145 million budget, including marketing, the film only managed $8.8 million in its opening weekend at the box office in the U.S., falling massively behind recent hits Deadpool and Wolverine and Twisters.

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The Borderlands franchise from Gearbox is undeniably popular, with the second game in the series being one of the highest-selling games of all time - blending mature-rated, over-the-top violence with humor and first-person shooting that incorporated Diablo-style loot for the game's seemingly countless guns.

The film adaptation ditches the story found in the games to present a brand-new take on the universe with familiar characters like Lilith, played by Cate Blanchet, alongside a star-studded cast that includes Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black voicing the robot Claptrap. The film also ditches the game's hyper-violent presentation for a more family-friendly PG-13 rating.

Critically, it's viewed as an abysmal failure, currently sitting at a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here are a few highlights.

"An insipid mishmash of trite genre tropes, Borderlands is devoid of any real edge," Los Angeles Times.

"Video game movie adaptations have spewed out some serious clunkers over the years. But even by the lamentable standards of the genre, Eli Roth's reshoot-plagued Borderlands is abysmal," The Observer.

"Nothing that works about the games has been adapted intact in this ugly, boring, truly inept piece of filmmaking," RogerEbert.com.

"There are still many cinema turkeys headed our way before the year closes. But this sci-fi gobbler mixes inept directing, terrible writing, indifferent acting, and gawdawful CGI into such stupefying boredom; it feels like nothing could top it for badness," Toronto Star.

So far, international box office receipts for Borderlands look to be worse than the film's U.S. opening, which means the film will have a hard time recouping even a portion of its budget. With the recent success of The Last of Us and Fallout on TV, the animated Super Mario Bros. film, and Sonic the Hedgehog live-action adaptation turning things around for video game adaptations, Borderlands feels like a giant step back.