'Borderlands' fans baffled as Kevin Hart signs up for movie with Cate Blanchett

Kevin Hart is the latest to board the Borderlands movie, set to adapt the smash video game franchise for the big screen.

The Jumanji star is set to play Roland, a 'stoic' resistance soldier, alongside Blanchett's Lilith, 'a Siren with magical powers.

Hostel director Eli Roth will be behind the camera, with Craig Mazin, who wrote HBO hit Chernobyl, penning the script.

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Hart took to Instagram to hail the news, saying: “This is a BIG one....So excited to be working with Cate Blanchett & Eli Roth on such an amazing project. Borderlands .....Wooooooow. God is gooooooood!!!!! Let's goooooooo #HustleHart.”

But this latest casting announcement has fans of the first-person shooter scratching their heads, with the often goofy and diminutive Hart signed up to play a hulking and humourless resistance fighter.

Many have noted that Hart might be better suited to the role of wise-cracking robot Claptrap.

Even Roth himself has conceded that it is indeed a 'different kind of role' for Hart.

“I’m thrilled to be working with Kevin,” he said in a statement. “Borderlands is a different kind of role for him, and we are excited to thrill audiences with a side of Kevin they’ve never seen before.

“He’s going to be an amazing Roland.”

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Borderlands is among the most successful video game franchises of all time, emerging with its first instalment in 2009.

Set far in the future, it presents an open world of 'vault hunters' seeking a fabled cache on the inhospitable planet of Pandora.

Sequels Borderlands 2 and 3 arrived in 2012 and 2019, with other downloadable packs bringing its total revenue to over $1 billion.

The first game alone sold over 53 million copies.

Watch: Borderlands 3 trailer