Borderlands' theatrical run grinds to a halt with just $31 million worldwide, which is barely enough to cover the marketing costs

The theatrical run of the Borderlands film is over, and much like my very brief career as a cook at KFC, it did not end well and nobody is surprised. After flopping badly (I mean, badly) in its opening weekend, movie industry research and data firm The Numbers (via Forbes) says Borderlands managed to draw in a total of just under $31 million globally—a fraction of what it cost to make and market.

Look, in some contexts $31 million is a lot of money. If I had $31 million, for instance, someone else would be writing this story. But in the context of a Hollywood film starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis? That's something else entirely. 

Variety estimates the Borderlands flick had a production budget of roughly $115 million, and then cost another $30 million to promote and distribute. If accurate (and Variety is usually pretty good about these things) that means Borderlands earned just enough in theaters to cover its marketing budget.

So that's bad, yeah, but just how bad is it? With help from Google and The Numbers' movie comparison feature, I can tell you this: It's really bad. 

I present to you...

(in no particular order)

One big-budget, big(ish)-cast Hollywood film Borderlands managed to beat, which I bring up only because I paid good money to see it in theaters and I'm still sore about the whole thing, is Wing Commander, an utterly execrable celluloid waste of time and effort that bumbled to $11.5 million globally. Frankly I'm surprised it did that well.

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There is some small solace for Borderlands amidst all this wailing and gnashing of box office receipts: It at least handily beat anything ever done by Uwe Boll, the infamously bad director of infamously bad videogame films who dunked on the film in August. Boll's House of the Dead, apparently his biggest success, earned just $14 million globally at the box office; on the other hand,