The Borderlands movie may well have attracted quite a list of talented actors for its cast of Vault Hunters, villains, and supporting characters, but it seems like Borderlands 3 nearly had a movie star of its own. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford revealed one of the game’s characters had been designed with the intention of casting Danny DeVito as its voice actor, but things didn’t work out as planned.
Typhon DeLeon is a Borderlands 3 NPC that calls himself the first Vault Hunter after he set off for better things than following his family into turd farming. Many fans of the game have compared the character to DeVito previously but their similarities had never been confirmed before today. Apparently a chance meeting between Pitchford and DeVito resulted in the latter stating his wish to voice a character in one of Gearbox’s games.
While the team were creating the character, they wanted someone who was “infamous and imagined to be the perfect super hero in stature and appearance.” Those who have played the game will realize DeLeon is not even remotely like this, mainly because Pitchford instead wanted “half-myth and half reality,” one that turned out to be “unassuming, short, and rough around the edges.” As the character was developed further, he was formed with DeVito in mind as the actor.
When it came to casting the character, discussions began with DeVito but “Danny’s peeps kept ghosting” them. Another reason for giving up on the idea was that the character’s table reader, Motion Graphics Designer Mike Cosner, was “so great at the role” when the team were trying out the character’s lines and had “nailed” the temporary voiceover recordings. As such, Cosner ended up cast as the character’s official voice actor.
You can read Pitchford’s full Twitter thread below:
I got introduced to Danny DeVito during my time there and we went back to his trailer and were talking shop by his trailer between shots. We talked about entertainment and videogames and he said he would love to do a character in one of our games.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) September 13, 2021
DeLeon isn’t one of the characters set to make an appearance in the Borderlands movie, so we’re not going to see DeVito in the world of Pandora just yet. The movie will release at some point next year.
[Source: Twitter]
