Craig Mazin, co-writer of the game-based Borderlands movie, has had his name removed from the movie.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because Mazin wrote Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. Oh, and he wrote and created the Chernobyl mini-series and HBO’s The Last of Us, directing the latter. So having him remove his name from the Borderlands movie, simply just called Borderlands, is a bit of a big deal.
World of Reel reported the news and, as confirmed by Kotaku, the Writers Guild no longer has him credited on the movie. Instead, he’s now “credited” as the pseudonym Joe Crombie. It’s not unlike “Alan Smithee” which, while since retired, was used by directors who no longer wanted to be associated with a movie.
So what, then, has led Mazin to remove his name from Borderlands? He’s yet to comment publicly but the production has been a little trouble. The film, which starts Jamie Lee Curtis and Dr. Patricia Tannis and Cate Blanchett as Lilith, wrapped filming mid 2021. However, since then, it’s been undergoing rewrites and reshoots.
The most recent reshoots have involved Deadpool director Tim Miller and there’s still no release date in sight. It could be that the studio isn’t happy with the audience response, test screenings already having taken place.
That, in turn, may have led the studio to insist on these reshoots/rewrites. That doesn’t actually mean they’re improving the movie, though. In the first Hitman movie, there’s a scene where 47 and fellow agents lay down their guns and have a knife fight. The studio, not director Xavier Gens, was responsible for adding this scene.
So, for now, we wouldn’t count on seeing Borderlands any time soon. As great as the game is, video game movies don’t have a great track record. Craig Mazin knocked it out of the park with HBO’s The Last of US, co-created with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann. So it definitely doesn’t bode well that he’s distance himself in this way.
