Borderlands was one of the worst-reviewed major films of the year when it opened, scoring just 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. But now that the full opening weekend box office results are in, it could also post one of the biggest box office losses of the year compared to its reported budget.

The film Borderlands is said to have grossed $8.6 million domestically, placing it fourth on the US box office charts. Worldwide, this figure rose to $9.3 million, with only $722,031 added in the regions where it was released.

This is due to a budget of $115-145 million for production and marketing. If you’ve seen it, you know it’s not a cheap film considering all the visual effects required to bring the explosive game series to life. The studio stated that 60% of its production costs were covered by “international ticket presales,” but it’s unclear how that fits into that total, as no further information beyond those current numbers has surfaced. That total would be around $60-70 million if those presales are actually added in here at some point, but still less than the total budget.

Most “adult-oriented” games have eschewed film adaptations and instead focused on streaming series. These can be live-action films like The Last of Us, Fallout, Twisted Metal, and Halo. Or they’re animated like Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners. In theaters, we’ve seen kid-oriented mega-hits like the Super Mario Bros. movie ($1.3 billion worldwide) or the Sonic the Hedgehog movies ($725 million worldwide). And then there was Detective Pikachu with $450 million.

Still, there are recent hits like Five Nights at Freddy’s ($297 million) and Uncharted ($401 million). To a lesser extent, the R-rated Mortal Kombat grossed $83 million worldwide.

None of these films were well received by critics, but they were well received by audiences, who were often fans of the games, who were very satisfied, as you can see:

• Uncharted – 40% critics, 90% audience rating
• Mortal Kombat – 55% critics, 86% audience rating
• Five Nights at Freddy’s – 32% critics score, 87% audience score.

This is the most important thing that Borderlands was missing: the support of tens of millions of Borderlands players who, among other things, did not like the significant changes to the film.

With this worldwide release, it seems almost impossible for Borderlands to recoup its costs, with no hope of planned future expansions to the franchise. We can track more numbers as they come in, including rumored pre-sales, but there’s an R-rated blockbuster coming this weekend, Alien: Romulus, and it seems likely that It Ends With Us’ second week and Deadpool and Wolverine’s fourth week will do well.

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