HBO's The Last of Us Showrunner Quietly Removes Name from Troubled Borderlands Flick | Push Square
It's never a good sign when your writer, who in this case happens to be one of Hollywood's hottest, takes steps to obfuscate their involvement with your project. That's precisely the case with the long-in-development Borderlands film, the original script for which was penned by Craig Mazin (The Last of Us, Chernobyl), who just recently asked the WGA to pull his name and instead use the pseudonym "Joe Crombie".
We hope this means Mazin recognises peerless fantasy author Joe Abercrombie, Lord Grimdark himself, as the grittiness GOAT, but that theory lack substantive evidence. In reality, since Mazin penned the script back in 2015 (to be directed by Eli Roth), a steady stream of supplementary writers has been brought in. To date, Aaron Berg, Chris Bremner, Sam Levinson, Zak Olkewicz, Tony Rettenmaier, Juel Taylor, and Oren Uziel have all put their collective fingers (around 70, we'd guess) in the proverbial honey pot.
We would imagine the name change is to avoid unnecessary confusion. At this point, there is likely little less than an outline left of Mazin's initial work; that, and he probably doesn't want the blame for whatever Jack Black/Claptrap madness ultimately emerges (while still retaining any associated rights in the process).
And to be clear, the Borderlands film actually <a href=«https://twitter.com/GearboxOfficial/status/1407383566036746250?ref_src=» https:>wrapped shooting in 2021
; it now seems to exist in some kind of post-production limbo, with director Roth swapped out for Tim Miller (Deadpool) as recently as this past January.
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