It’s been years since the Borderlands movie was first announced, and for most of that time, it felt like the film might never come out. But now, almost a decade after we first heard about it, we finally have a trailer for Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie. And surprisingly, it actually kind of looks like Borderlands.
The trailer introduces us to the basics of the story, which should be recognizable to any Borderlands fan: a group of treasure hunters, including Lilith (Cate Blanchett) and Roland (Kevin Hart) come to the hostile Pandora in search of a vault that’s said to contain untold riches, and they’re guided by a robot named Claptrap, voiced by Jack Black. What they find when they get there is a weird and dangerous planet full of weirdos and horrifying creatures. The trailer also gives us a look at a few other series favorites like Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), though it seems like their roles might be slightly different here than in the games.
The movie isn’t officially canon with the games, but it’s obviously borrowing quite a few characters from the series. Characters like Roland and Lilith were first introduced in the original Borderlands, but characters like Tiny Tina, who features heavily in the trailer, didn’t come in until Borderlands 2. One of the interesting things about this trailer is just how much it looks like Borderlands, despite smartly foregoing the game series’ trademark cell-shaded graphics style. Even without that, the movie evokes the games pretty well, with visuals that seem right in line with the series’ incredibly silly tone.
Along with the cast that shows up in the trailer, the movie also stars Gina Gershon (Thanksgiving) as Moxxi, Edgar Ramirez (Dr. Death) as Atlas, Janina Gavankar (The Morning Show) as Knoxx, Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story) as Jakobs, and Haley Bennett (The Magnificent Seven) in an unspecified role.
The movie is set to release on Aug. 9.
