The Last of Us Creator Craig Mazin's Writing Credit Removed From Borderlands Movie

You've heard of Craig Mazin, the co-creator and showrunner of HBO's The Last of Us and co-writer of Eli Roth's Borderlands movie. You probably haven't heard of Joe Crombie, who shares screenplay credit with Roth on the Writers Guild of America directory. When Lionsgate set Roth as director of the Gearbox Software and 2K video game adaptation in 2020, it was from a draft penned by Mazin, fresh off an Emmy win for HBO's Chernobyl. But Mazin appears to be credited under the pseudonym "Joe Crombie," with the screenplay credited to Eli Roth and Joe Crombie.

Here are the Borderlands movie credits as they appear on the WGA database:

Feature credit
Screenplay by: Eli Roth and Joe Crombie
Screen story by: Eli Roth
Source Material: Based on the Video Game "Borderlands" Created by Gearbox Software and Published by 2K
Final Credits: 06/21/23

There are another seven separate writers credited with providing "additional literary material (not on-screen)": Aaron Berg and Chris Bremner (Bad Boys for Life) and Sam Levinson (HBO's The Idol) and Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train) and Tony Rettenmaier (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) and Juel Taylor (They Cloned Tyrone) and Oren Uziel (Mortal Kombat).

Per the official WGA screen credits manual: "When credit is accorded to a team of writers, an ampersand (&) shall be used between the writers' names in the credit to denote a writing team. Use of the word 'and' between writers' names in a credit indicates that the writers did their work separately, one usually rewriting the other."

And here's what the manual says regarding a withdrawal from credit:

"Prior to the time a credit question has been submitted to arbitration, a writer may withdraw from screen writing credit for personal cause, such as violation of his/her principles or mutilation of material he/she has written. If the other writer-contributors do not agree, the question shall be referred to arbitration. The Arbitration Committee in such cases shall base its determination on whether there is such personal cause. After screen credits have been determined by arbitration, a writer may not withdraw his/her name from screenplay credit. He/she may, however, by notification to the Guild, withdraw from any other form of credit. Withdrawal from writing credit will result in loss of any and all rights accruing from receipt of writing credit. Use of a pseudonym rather than withdrawing from credit will not result in such a forfeiture."

In January, it was reported Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller stepped in to handle two weeks of reshoots on Borderlands as Roth went to work on his Thanksgiving slasher. Ari and Avi Arad are producing via Arad Productions with Erik Feig through PictureStart; Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford and Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick serve as executive producers.

Lionsgate describes Borderlands: "Lilith (Cate 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 (Edgar Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team — Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Jack 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 but they'll be fighting for something more: each other."

A release date is TBA.