First Borderlands trailer sees Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart take us on a treacherous, Mad Max-style treasure hunt

Almost three whole years after the movie wrapped filming, the first full trailer for Borderlands is here – and, rather unsurprisingly, it looks like a colorful, chaotic alien-filled riot. Think Mad Max: Fury Road meets Guardians of the Galaxy, but with more explosions and even more attitude...

Directed by Eli Roth, the action-packed flick, which adapts the popular looter shooter video game of the same name, sees Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Cate Blanchett bring the likes of Roland, Claptrap, and Lilith to life, as the latter reluctantly returns to her home-planet of Pandora. There, she embarks on a treacherous mission to steal some treasure from a secret vault, alongside newfound accomplices Tiny Tina (Barbie's Ariana Greenblatt), Claptrap (Jack Black), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and Roland (Kevin Hart).

"If you go hunting for it, you'd better take any help you can get," the flame-haired Lilith says in the promo, which you can watch above. "'Cause it's on the weirdest, most dangerous, dumpster-fire of a world in the universe."

"Do you know how many people have died looking for this vault?!" she continues, as Tina optimistically replies: "We have something they don't, baby girl... Major issues!"

The gang will be joined on screen by Edgar Ramirez, American Horror Story's Cheyenne Jackson, Haley Bennett, Janina Gavankar, Bobby Lee, Haley Bennett, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Kind of appropriately, really, given its plot, Borderlands' journey to the big screen has been far from an easy ride. Roth was attached when it was first announced way back in 2015, and subsequently shot the film. But in January 2023, it was announced that Deadpool's Tim Miller was reportedly set to tweak the existing footage and that a new writer, Zak Olkewicz, had been brought on. 

Later, though, it was confirmed that Miller handled the two weeks' of reshoots while Roth was busy with holiday horror Thanksgiving. On the movie's official poster, only Roth and Joe Crombie are credited as writers, so we figure it's managed to maintain the majority of its original material.

Borderlands releases on August 9. For more, check out all the upcoming video game movies heading our way.

Amy West

I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.

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