Word recently circulated that director Eli Roth had been replaced by Tim Miller (Deadpool) for the reshoots on videogame adaptation Borderlands. But while that evoked speculation about some sort of falling out, Deadline has the full story.
Roth reportedly handed over the reins for two weeks of reshoots to Miller, his friend, because he has to get going with making Thanksgiving, the horror film based on a mock trailer that Roth made for the Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse film back in 2007. Despite a flurry of speculative reports, Roth has not been fired from Borderlands.
For those that don’t remember, the Thanksgiving trailer presented a gory teaser to a fake movie about a slasher who makes his own carving board out of the inhabitants of a small town that makes a big annual fuss over the annual turkey day.
The trailer – one of many that played between the two features in Grindhouse – was popular enough that plans formulated to make a feature-length version with Roth at the helm, but 15 years has passed since the original Grindhouse release, and many assumed that it was never happening.
But it is. Shooting will reportedly begin in March, with a script by Jeff Rendell, and Spyglass producing. But Roth now needs to step away from Borderlands to begin production on Thanksgiving, and Miller is reportedly doing him a solid by doing a few weeks worth of reshoots on Borderlands, which has had its own long road to the big screen.
The movie will revolve around Cate Blanchett‘s Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, who reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora – no relation to Avatar – to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful villain, Atlas. Roth has co-written the script alongside Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us).
The Borderlands series is one of the bestselling video game franchises of all time, and fans have patiently waited for a big screen version. Despite decades of ill will, video game adaptations have had a bit of a positive uptick in the last half-decade, so expectations have grown.
Roth’s passion for the projects he works on also helps, so when news initially arrived of Miller taking over, fans were naturally wary. But all seems well. Miller should be a more than competent hand for the reshoots – themselves extremely common for big movies – while horror fans will finally get to see Thanksgiving in its feature length glory.
There’s currently no release date set for either film.
#Peace.Love.Borderlands
