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Ariana Greenblatt has been a standout since the first Borderlands trailer dropped, and by the sounds of things she picked a great movie as her breakthrough movie to film. Appearing in front of a large crowd at Lionsgate’s 2024 CinemaCon panel, she and director Eli Roth revealed how they absolutely had the best time on set ‘fucking’ with Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Hart with some inside jokes befitting a movie as offbeat and oddball as only the Borderlands movie adaptation could be.
Roth spoke about Mad Max and a slew of other movies in the sci-fi genre influenced his idea of how Borderlands should come together, but when it came to the teenaged Greenblatt, the two got into some weird inspiration for her character. He had her watching My Dinner with Andre (a deeply philosophical movie about two men going to dinner and having differing world views) and Empire by Andy Warhol (which is just literally eight hours of the Empire State building being filmed.)
Then, he had her listen to some Michael McDonald to prep for her character. But how did this mess with Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis? I’m getting there.
We had the best times. We developed this insane sense of humor where we had an Ipod monitor with Empire. … Jamie Lee Curtis would be like, ‘I have a question?’ We’d be like, ‘Shush, shush, this is the good part this, is the good part.’ We’d have Kevin Hart going crazy and going, ‘Why are you watching My Dinner with Andre for the 40th time?’ The more they got mad, the funnier it got to us. So, it somehow watching those movies got us into the head space for [Borderlands].
Jamie Lee Curtis would see all of this going on and keep telling Roth, ‘What are you putting into that child’s head?’ But the director says the tact worked. Eventually, he was giving her notes directly adjacent to all this content they had running on the iPad all the time.
I’d be like, ‘A little more Empire, give me 10% more Michael McDonald, 5% less toaster. And just the look of confusion on everyone’s face of just going, ‘Wait, what?’ Then she would just go right into it.
They might have been messing with the older and more established Borderlands cast, but it sounds like it helped her get into character as Tiny Tina when the movie was filming, which actually happened before Barbie filmed per Roth –the movie release date schedule is always a little wild like that. Barbie ended up being the first big film for Greenblatt, but it wasn’t the first one she shot.
It’s good to hear the cast had a blast making the movie, because the trailer for Borderlands we saw today had that tone and vibe, and it wasn’t just Greenblatt, the always-amusing Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis that seemed to be having a good time.
Roth said he actually got leading lady Blanchett on board first, and then big names like Jack Black and everyone else already mentioned in this article jumped on board. Kevin Hart even got more insanely fit for the movie. Their excitement is infectious, and given we’ve been hearing about this movie for years now, it’s great we’ll be able to finally check it out when it hits theaters at the tail end of the summer on August 9, 2024.