Eli Roth Got Sick of Studio Notes and Shrinking Residuals, With ‘Ice Cream Man’ He’s Going Into Business for Himself

By Brent Lang

Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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When Eli Roth was making “Borderlands,” a $120 million adaptation of a popular video game, he felt the movie getting farther and farther away from his punk rock vision.

“As things grow bigger, studios just naturally become more risk averse,” Roth says. “My nature as a filmmaker is to do the thing that’s left of center, because that’s what has worked for me.”

But to earn a PG-13 rating, studio executives pushed for cuts and tweaks, and the finished product was a disaster, bombing with audiences and critics when it opened in 2024.

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