Eli Roth, director of the 2024 video game adaptation Borderlands, has spoken candidly about why the film flopped, saying it "belonged to nobody" because too many people had creative input without any single vision guiding it. The film currently holds a dismal 10% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and was widely panned on release, joining a long line of video game films that have struggled to translate source material successfully to the screen.

Roth's comments point to a familiar Hollywood problem where studio interference, reshoots and competing creative demands can dilute a director's original intent, leaving a finished product without a clear authorial stamp. Despite a starry cast including Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, the film underperformed critically and commercially, adding to the mixed track record of video game-to-film adaptations even as titles like The Last of Us and the Sonic franchise have shown the genre can succeed when handled well.