Lilith is a bounty hunter who has built a life far from Pandora, the planet where she grew up. When the powerful tycoon Atlas hires her to find his teenage daughter, Tina, she is pulled back to a world she barely remembers. To complete the job she must team up with a crew of unreliable mercenaries and outlaws, including Roland and Krieg, and a clumsy robot called Claptrap. Amid gunfights, chases and a search for relics of a lost civilization, the group soon finds that nothing is quite what it seems, though the film leans mostly toward slapstick comedy.

How it was made

The project began in 2011, when Gearbox Software chief Randy Pitchford first discussed an adaptation with producers Ari and Avi Arad. In 2015 Lionsgate announced the film with Leigh Whannell in talks to direct, but he did not stay on. Aaron Berg, Oren Uziel and later Craig Mazin worked on the screenplay, which Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier rewrote before Eli Roth revised it again. Cate Blanchett led the cast from 2020, followed by Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black, who voiced Claptrap. Filming took place in Budapest from April to June 2021, during the pandemic. Two weeks of new scenes were shot in 2023 under Tim Miller, and Mazin removed his name from the script, replaced by Joe Crombie. Nathan Barr's score was replaced by Steve Jablonsky's.

Reception and legacy

The film premiered in Los Angeles in August 2024 and opened in US cinemas days later. Critics responded very negatively, with only about 10 percent of reviews favourable on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 27 out of 100. Audiences were also unimpressed, earning a D+ CinemaScore. It grossed roughly 33 million dollars against an estimated budget of 110 to 120 million, and it is generally regarded as a box-office bomb. It is now remembered mainly as an example of a video game adaptation that failed to carry its tone to the big screen.