Uwe Boll, the director of several video game movies, including the critically panned Alone in the Dark, has mocked Eli Roth's Borderlands adaptation, saying audiences probably wish he had helmed it.
Boll took a swipe at Borderlands on X/Twitter by sharing an image that IGN posted about the movie's devastating box office debut (having made only $8.8 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend) alongside his own caption: "Ha ha. My movies were rated R and made more money than this. Now you wish I directed."
Ha ha. My movies were rated R and made more money than this. Now you wish I Directed pic.twitter.com/LXMOyKMkMM
— UWE BOLL RAW USA (@UweBollRAWUSA) August 12, 2024
One person on X/Twitter refuted Boll's claim by sharing statistics, showing that at least four of his movies opened to less at the box office than Borderlands. Boll then responded with the claim that his movies have been illegally downloaded 41 billion times (though he didn't provide any evidence to prove this is a factual statement).
The German filmmaker made a name for himself in Hollywood by tackling various video game movie adaptations during the 2000s, but they were deemed critical and commercial failures. Alone in the Dark, released in 2005, is considered one of the worst movies ever (with only a 1% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes).
Wrong pic.twitter.com/GKtE1h5dMW
— UWE BOLL RAW USA (@UweBollRAWUSA) August 12, 2024
Other video game movies in his director's filmography include the 2003 action horror House of the Dead, which was the first of many misfires for Boll, and the 2005 vampire flick BloodRayne, which was a box office bomb, with precious little to salvage despite starring the likes of Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen.
The infamous helmer behind many other failed video game adaptations was once the subject of an online petition asking him to stop making movies, but some defended him. Boll kept going for a while before formally announcing his retirement from filmmaking in 2016, though he did return to the director's chair in 2022.
Borderlands has had a rough start on all fronts. IGN gave the movie an "awful" 3 out of 10 score in its review, which read: "Borderlands is a catastrophic disappointment that plays like hacked-to-pieces studio slop, betraying everything fans adore about Gearbox Software's franchise in derivative, regrettable fashion."
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on X/Twitter here.
