Lionsgate CEO on ‘Borderlands’ Box Office Disaster: ‘Nearly Everything That Could Go Wrong, Did Go Wrong’

“Borderlands,” Lionsgate‘s star-studded video game adaptation, is standing out as one of the biggest bombs at the box office this year. The film budgeted at $115 million earned just $32.9 million globally, a “disaster” for the studio considering the high hopes the studio had to turn into a franchise based on the game series’ huge popularity.

The performance of the film was so poor, Lionsgate could not ignore it during its earnings for the summer quarter.

“On ‘Borderlands,’ nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” CEO Jon Feltheimer said in his prepared opening remarks on Thursday. “It sat on the shelf for too long during the pandemic, and reshoots and rising interest rates took it outside the safety zone of our usual strict financial models.”

Feltheimer then noted that Lionsgate’s other releases this quarter also “didn’t live up to either our standards or our projections.” The studio has been on a big losing streak at the box office.

Other disappointments this quarter included the remake of “The Crow,” “The Killer’s Game,” and “Never Let Go.” But “Borderlands” hit especially hard.

Lionsgate in its Q2 2025 earnings took a loss of $163.3 million and earnings per share loss of $0.43, and the studio group also had its motion picture profits fall to just $2.6 million, down from $67.5 million year-over-year.

In fact, CFO James Barge said on the call that the performance of the film “necessitated a revision” of Lionsgate’s fiscal projection for 2025, now putting it at $300-321 million of adjusted OIBDA. He said that while pre-sales internationally mitigated some of the damage, the losses on the film were “outside of its expected range” in terms of projections.

“We learn valuable lessons from every release, and ‘Borderlands’ is no exception,” Barge said, adding that they’ll “continue to refine our wide theatrical release strategy.”

Analysts even asked Motion Picture Group head Adam Fogelson what changes they should expect on the film side, and he responded that while Lionsgate has done a great job being financially disciplined, the creative side of things needs to be more aligned in terms of what’s being developed, produced, how things are marketed, and more.

Lionsgate is hopeful though to see some recovery next year and beyond. It has a “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina” coming out next year, as well as a Michael Jackson biopic, and a new “Hunger Games” movie based on a new book arriving in 2026. Fogelson also touted its “Saw” and “Highlander” franchises as ones it wants to prioritize.

“Borderlands” earned a dire D+ CinemaScore from audiences, and IndieWire’s review called it a “tortured adaptation.” The film was a PG-13 adaptation of a hyper-violent video game, and IndieWire said it was “too messy and too neat, too much and not enough.”