THE LAST OF US Writer Craig Mazin Removes His Name From Eli Roth's BORDERLANDS Movie

It looks like Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie is in bad shape. The filmmaker wrapped production on the film in June of 2021, and over that time there are been rewrites and reshoots. Well, whatever the movie is turning out to be, The Last of Us co-writer and co-creator Craig Mazin doesn’t want his name attached to it.

You can see on the Writer’s Guild website that the current credited writers on the Borderlands film are Eli Roth and Joe Crombie, which is a pseudonym for Craig Mazin. This is a common practice in Hollywood for filmmakers who don’t want their name connected to a film project because they're embarrassed by it.

Mazin was the original co-writer on the film and since then there has been a revolving door of writers who worked on the project. World of Reel reveals some of those writers have been Aaron Berg, Oren Uziel, Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Chris Bremner, Gary Ross, Zak Olkewicz, and The Idol creator Sam Levinson.

It was revealed several months ago that Deadpool director Tim Miller replaced Roth as the director for two weeks of reshoots. It was initially explained that the reason for this is that Roth reportedly couldn’t fit the time into his schedule, because he’s making his horror movie, Thanksgiving.

So, that’s discouraging to hear. The story for the movie follows Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past. She reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora and forms an unexpected alliance to find the missing daughter of Atlas.

The film stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis, Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black's character Clatrap, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, and Florian Munteanu as Krieg. They will be joined by Gina Gershon as Moxxi, Edgar Ramirez, Janina Gavankar, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Ryann Redmond, and Haley Bennett.

The synopsis for the film reads: “Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland (Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands.”

I did get to see a bit of footage from the film last year, and what I saw looked cool. But after reading this recent update, it sounds like the film’s story is going to be a complete mess. I hope it’s good, but if Mazin doesn’t want his name attached, that’s pretty dire.