Writer Craig Mazin has dismissed reports that he’s had his name taken off the credits of Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie adaptation. “I did not use a pseudonym,” the writer says.
The Last of Us screenwriter Craig Mazin has dismissed earlier reports that he’s had his name removed from the credits of Borderlands – the long-in-gestation movie based on Gearbox Software’s looter shooter series. On the Writers Guild of America’s website, Borderlands is credited to Eli Roth and someone named Joe Crombie, leading to several outlets – including this one – to report that Mazin may have asked to have his name replaced with a pseudonym.
In a statement shared with Variety (via Eurogamer), however, Mazin calls these reports “false.”
“I am not a credited writer on the film, so I cannot claim any kind of authorship of Borderlands, much less ‘co-writing,’” Mazin said. “I did see the report about the pseudonym, which is false. I did not use a pseudonym. If the name in question is indeed a pseudonym, all I can say is… it’s not mine.”
Mazin’s statement, curiously, raises more questions than it answers. No such screenwriter named Joe Crombie exists, at least according to Google or IMDb. Exactly who credited the Borderlands' movie’s script to Crombie – or even why they did it – isn’t presently clear.
Directed by Eli Roth, of Hostel fame, the Borderlands movie was originally announced in 2015, and has taken a circuitous route to our cinema screens. Filming was originally said to have ended in 2021, but the film has since undergone rewrites and at least two rounds of reshoots. The most recent was headed up by Deadpool director Tim Miller, and took place in January this year, roughly two months after some private screenings took place in November 2022.
With a starry cast, including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black, the Borderlands film certainly has some big names behind it. One thing it doesn’t have right now is a release date, though Jamie Lee Curtis – who plays Patricia Tannis – recently told Yahoo News that she thought Borderlands would emerge “next year.”
“She [Patricia Tannis] has autism,” Curtis said, hinting at the kind of humour we’re likely to be in for when the film finally emerges. “She’s a strange woman who has objectum sexuality, where she falls in love with inanimate objects.”
“It’s pretty wacky,” the actress added.
