Borderlands: Eli Roth video game adaptation is “so close to the game”

Six months have gone by since filming wrapped on director Eli Roth‘s adaptation of the Borderlands video game series from Gearbox and 2K, and we haven’t heard much about it since – but cast member Janina Gavankar, who describes herself as a “hardcore gamer”, is certain that fans of the games are going to be very pleased when they see how faithful Roth was to the source material.

Speaking with Collider, Gavankar said,

The production design and the art direction alone is so close to the game. You can’t believe they put this much love and attention into the details. I came in with my arms crossed like, ‘You better do it right because I’m here to call bullsh*t.’ And it’s like, they went hard. They really meant it. Even down to our costumes, just getting the colors of everything right. There’s a lot of love that went into the production. … And then a lot of people from Gearbox got to be there so the thing that’s wonderful is when you get to see a dev walk around and pick up something that they created digitally? I mean, come on. That’s the kind of really special stuff that I just love watching come to fruition.”

The role Gavankar plays in the movie, “a new, key character” called Commander Knoxx, has not been in the video games. She is joined in the cast by Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Edgar Ramirez, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Haley Bennett, Olivier Richters, Gina Gershon, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Bobby Lee, Ryann Redmond, and Penn Jillette, with Jack Black providing the voice of the robot Claptrap.

Scripted by Craig Mazin, Borderlands has the following synopsis:

Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland (Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other. 

Borderlands is produced by Arad Productions’ Avi Arad and Ari Arad, along with PICTURESTART’s Erik Feig. Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford serves as executive producer with Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two Interactive. James Myers and Aaron Edmonds are overseeing the project for Lionsgate, while Emmy Yu does the same for Arad Productions and Lucy Kitada and Royce Reeves-Darby are overseeing for PICTURESTART.

Here’s hoping we’ll be hearing a lot more about Borderlands, including a release date, very soon.