The creator of Borderlands, Randy Pitchford was one of the several attendees during this past Comic Con. But he didn’t come alone, he also brought the cast to talk about the world of Pandora. Pitchford is known in the gaming industry for its creativity as a developer and creating universes like Pandora.

The Synopsis

Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous bounty hunter with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home, Pandora, the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Ramírez), the universe’s most powerful S.O.B. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits – Roland (Hart), a seasoned mercenary on a mission; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s muscle bound protector; Tannis (Curtis), the oddball scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap (Black), a wiseass robot. Together, these unlikely heroes must battle an alien species and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other.Based on one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time, welcome to BORDERLANDS.

During San Diego Comic Con last month I had the opportunity to sit down with Randy Pitchford to talk about Borderlands. There was so much excitement in the air. He expressed how happy he was to be at SDCC along with the cast. Pitchford also shared the beginnings of Borderlands and how it has expanded over the years to now reaching its stage on the screen and much more!

Nancy Tapia: Hi Randy!

Randy Pitchford: Hi.

Nancy Tapia: How exciting is it to bring the cast, and yourself included, to Comic-Con?

Randy Pitchford: It’s crazy! I mean, I can’t believe we’re here. When I started with this video game franchise, we launched the first Borderlands game in 2009. It never occurred to me we would be at a point where we’d have this cast for this movie actually existing and coming to the world. It’s a dream come true. Can you imagine what that’s like? We’re just making virtual stuff, digital, video games, and now it’s manifesting in the real world. It’s pretty amazing.

Nancy Tapia: That is amazing. So you’ve been around Borderlands for a long time. Tell me about the beginning and your involvement from the video game.

Randy Pitchford: I’ve been making video games my entire career. Not too long after I founded the Gearbox Entertainment Company and were making some other video games. My hope was to take mediums in video games, genres that didn’t belong together, and see if I can mix them and come up with something new. Kind of like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup where you take chocolate and peanut butter, mix it together, and it’s a whole new taste. So Borderlands, the word literally means the space between other space, the borderland between other things.

In the video game world, it was the role-playing game mixed with a shooter, but it’s also a science fiction and a Western, it’s a drama and a comedy, and it’s the characters themselves. Every character lives in a place between who they are and who they wish they were, and it’s this other place in between. So to take the video game and adapt it to a film, well, now that’s also in a borderland between video game and a movie, two different mediums of storytelling. To me, it’s part of the journey of Borderlands. So I was there from cradle to grave. I named the game, I designed the logo, I scratched it into my desk when I was working at my computer back when ….It’s a whole team of people that I hired to build my company with me, but we built Borderlands together.

Nancy Tapia: That’s amazing. So this is your baby!

Randy Pitchford: Pretty much, yeah.

Nancy Tapia: That you’re seeing all over the place.

Randy Pitchford: I didn’t give birth to it, but…Haha…

Nancy Tapia: It came out of the brain, haha…

Randy Pitchford: Our collective creative brains. My company today, the Gearbox Entertainment Company, has hundreds of talented artists and designers and programmers. When I founded the company, we had five people. There were five of us.

Nancy Tapia: And today?

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, today there’s hundreds. It’s been on that continuum. I think when we shipped our first Borderlands game, there were probably about 80 or 90 of us.

Nancy Tapia: Wow.

Randy Pitchford: Which is a pretty big deal. So we all were doing a lot of stuff, and I love it. I think I was genetically made to entertain people and to create experiences and I love interactive, but I love all forms of storytelling. I’m a magician. And to be able to become a filmmaker is a dream come true. And to work with the greatest in the world. Eli Roth is directing this thing. We got Cate Blanchett as our lead. Who gets Cate Blanchett in their movie? For a video game movie, that’s absurd.

Nancy Tapia: And last year she was very clean in Tár and now here she is, down and dirty in Borderlands.

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, she’s an action hero. Did you get to see it?

Nancy Tapia: Not yet.

Randy Pitchford: Oh, man. I look forward to seeing it..

Nancy Tapia: Oh, I’m looking forward to it.

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, it’s great.

Nancy Tapia: Tell me about bringing in Edgar Ramirez as a vilain?

Randy Pitchford: Edgar Ramirez, yeah, it was awesome. He’s great. He plays Deukalian Atlas. So Atlas in the Borderlands Universe is a corporation named after its founder and CEO. The Atlas Corporation is the most powerful corporation in this universe. So imagine if you had Apple and Tesla and Amazon all mixed in together, and it’s even more powerful than that. It’s the most insane technology company in the universe, and this man leads it.

And I remember when he first joined the project and we sat down and I had to tell him about the character and get him in the mood for it. He was like, “Oh, yeah.” He’s so great, but he’s also a nice guy and he’s super humble. So he gets on set the first day, Edgar, and he crushes. He’s on set, he’s with Cate Blanchett, and he’s with Kevin Hart and he’s with Jamie Lee Curtis. Legends! And he’s going to be the boss and he freaking pulled it off. You’ll see, he did it!

Nancy Tapia: I love it. I love him. He’s a great actor, he’s been playing real-life personalities too.

Randy Pitchford: He’s great, yeah. When casting was going on, my wife took one look at him, she’s like, “Yeah.” Hahah…I’m like, “Okay, we got it.” Haha…

Nancy Tapia: So how did you get Eli Roth to direct the film? He did awesome with one of his last films, Thanksgiving. I can never eat a turkey the same way. He kind of ruined Thanksgiving for me in that aspect, I love it! Haha…

Randy Pitchford: Oh, yes. I think that was his plan, haha…So mission accomplished, haha….No, Eli’s awesome. What’s funny is he talked about that movie while we were working on this one. Eli’s great. We got to talk to a lot of awesome directors that all wanted to take a swing and I really liked Eli. I liked his energy, I liked his character, and we got along so great. So I’m really grateful that he wanted to do it, and he stepped up. I’m grateful that Lionsgate supported him and the producers and everybody because I think the movie reflects his commitment to it.

Nancy Tapia: And had a big weight with this cast.

Randy Pitchford: We wouldn’t have gotten Cate without him, I think that’s true.

Nancy Tapia: Really?

Randy Pitchford: Yeah.

Nancy Tapia: Why is that?

Randy Pitchford: Well, because they worked together before, so they had trust. Especially at this time when we were on lockdown, it was during the pandemic, and we all had to live together. And you need to trust the people you’re working with. We were in a bubble where that was it. We had each other, and that was it for that period of time.

Nancy Tapia: Tell me about bringing the universe of Pandora because I still haven’t gotten a chance to see it.

Randy Pitchford: I wanted to build a place that had a few things to it. I wanted there to be all of this amazing technology from the most advanced civilization you can imagine, but it’s not perfectly accessible. So in the world of Pandora, it kind of reminds me, imagine if you went to a faraway place on Earth that didn’t actually have an Apple Store, didn’t actually have any stores. But now they’re getting their hands on iPhones and they’re getting their hands on amazing automobiles, but they’re the leftover versions. It’s not like the new one we bought. It’s kind of like the one that’s left over and passed down. So it’s unbelievable technology.

So the people, some of them are going to use it as a concept, take it apart and take little parts from it, and bash it into other things. So it’s this weird mix of Old Western meets science fiction. It’s like a borderland between science fiction and Western where you have lawlessness and Old West vibes combined with the influences or access to a very aspirational future. That’s not that, it’s this weird, uncomfortable place between those two things. That’s what Borderlands is. It’s always between two places, like a comedy and a drama or a character who lives in a place between who they are and who they wish they were. That’s what Borderlands always is for me.

Nancy Tapia: So that has to do with the characters’ personalities and how they get to work together?

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, and how they interact. It’s something I think we all deal with. I think all of us exist between who we actually are and who we want to be. I think that’s one of the reasons why Borderlands as a video game was so relatable and why it was so successful and continues to be successful. And I think that’s one of the reasons why filmmakers, Lionsgate and Eli and all of the cast involved were eager to adapt it because they saw that magic in there, and they thought that’d be really great for movie audiences.

Nancy Tapia: Wow. Well, that’s awesome. We have someone right here that did play the video game.

Randy Pitchford: Oh, awesome!
I played it and my four-year-old son played it. That’s not good, haha…

Randy Fuchs: But we’re going to be going to the movie. He’s a lot older now. So we’re going to get that generational combination.

Randy Pitchford: You know what? That’s what I want too from this. We have people that have played Borderlands for thousands of hours, more than me.

Randy Fuchs: Well, I was telling her I was like I stopped playing probably the last five years. My son still plays Tales from the Borderlands.

Randy Pitchford: Oh, that’s great.

Randy Fuchs: He’s still playing it. For the last week, he’s still playing it, so he’s excited for the movie. So I know we’ll be there opening weekend.

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, that’s cool. With me, there’s people that play video games and then there’s people in our lives that don’t, but some of us get really immersed and we love it. My mom’s really proud of me and she loves me, but she doesn’t play video games, but I can take her to this movie. I think that’s really cool. And I think there’s a lot of video gamers that are going to do the same thing.

Nancy Tapia: I don’t play video games, but I’m excited for the movie.

Randy Pitchford: Yeah and there’s something there.

Nancy Tapia: So you’re combining all these different personalities to have fun together.

Randy Pitchford: Yeah, exactly. That’s part of the theme of it because there’s the family we have, and then there’s the family we make. These characters don’t belong together. They don’t belong together at all, but they make it work. And at the end of it, you realize, “Oh, man, they’ve become a family.” It’s how we felt during making this movie. None of us making this movie would’ve even met each other but for the project. And we came together and we had to live together and kind of become a family to make this movie. The story of the movie itself is kind of an allegory for the experience we had making it.

Nancy Tapia: Do you feel though, since the film was filmed during COVID, that it has a different heart? .

Randy Pitchford: When you watch this movie, there’s going to be moments where you feel things. And when I think objectively about it, some of the emotional bits hit harder than they deserve to, and I think because of what we were feeling. I think some of the emotional bits will hit you harder because we’re goofing off in this movie, and it’s a weird invented universe that doesn’t have any stakes in the real world, and yet you’re going to care about some things that happen. The fact that we were able to get that, I think the emotional state we were all in made us find that place and bring it to life. So yeah, I think there’s something to it.

Nancy Tapia: Well, thank you for your time. Congratulations.

Randy Pitchford: Thanks for coming up. Cheers.

Nancy Tapia: It must be exciting to have your mom watch it.

Randy Pitchford: Haha…I can’t wait.

Nancy Tapia: So cool to take her to the premiere.

Randy Pitchford: Yes.

Nancy Tapia: She’ll be like, “Oh, this is what you do. You should bring me more often.” Haha…

Randy Pitchford: Yes, haha…

Borderlands opens in theaters August 9, 2024. 

Source: LRMOnline Exclusive, Lionsgate