HBO's The Last Of Us Co-Creator Craig Mazin Takes His Name Off Eli Roth's Borderlands Flick
Y'all, what is happening with the "Borderlands" movie? After five years of struggling to find a director, it was announced back in 2020 that Eli Roth was set to helm a film adaptation of the video game series with a script from Craig Mazin ("Chernobyl," "The Last of Us," "The Hangover II"), but in the years since, things have sounded worrisome.
One of the first signs for concern was the announcement that "Deadpool" director Tim Miller would be handling reshoots on the film, but all signs pointed to this being a matter of scheduling conflicts as Roth is now underway on his holiday slasher, "Thanksgiving," and therefore wasn't available for reshoots. Sure! Sounds understandable! No need to panic!
However, as Kotaku reports, not only have 10 different writers worked on "Borderlands," but Craig Mazin has elected to remove his name from the project altogether. We've already seen the look of Claptrap from the post-production process, so some very serious changes must have been made during reshoots to constitute Mazin's exit this late in the game.
"Borderlands" is a ridiculously popular series that attracted a star-studded cast including Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Gina Gershon, Florian Munteanu, Bobby Lee, Ariana Greenblatt, and Janina Gavankar. Unfortunately, it's been two years since we've seen any movement on "Borderlands," and with Mazin taking his name off of the project, it sounds like the film won't be following his original script. After all, removing his name from the project would require approval from the Writers Guild of America, which now lists the film as being written by the pseudonym "Joe Crombie."
Trouble in Borderlands
Craig Mazin is known today as the co-creator of HBO's "The Last of Us" as well as the creator of the truly remarkable "Chernobyl" limited series, and even has a recurring role on the very wonderful "Mythic Quest" series as an actor. But the man got his start writing goof-off comedies like "Scary Movie IV" and "Superhero Movie." This isn't to crap on his early comedy work (the man wrote what was required of him!), but if he was willing to keep his name on a movie that includes a "suicide by boner pills" joke, I can only imagine the fresh hell that awaits us in "Borderlands."
Kotaku also reported (via World of Reel) that in addition to Mazin, Eli Roth, and "Bullet Train" scribe Zak Olkewicz (who was brought on to assist with reshoot script needs), a variety of other writers have worked on the film. The list includes Aaron Berg ("G.I. Joe: Ever Vigilant"), Oren Uziel ("The Cloverfield Paradox"), Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier ("They Cloned Tyrone," "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Chris Bremner ("Bad Boys for Life"), Gary Ross ("The Hunger Games"), and Sam Levinson ("The Idol"). All of the aforementioned writers are some pretty talented folks, but this many writers on one project smells a bit like the cinematic equivalent of "too many cooks spoil the broth."
Considering how many people love the "Borderlands" games and were looking forward to the film, we can only hope that not only does the film actually see the light of day, but that it's not the production-hell trainwreck it currently sounds like it might be.
"Borderlands" does not currently have an expected release date.