“Divergent” author Veronica Roth says she has made peace with the fact the fourth and final film in the franchise based on her book trilogy will never get made.
Much like several other franchises around the time, Lionsgate attempted to turn the young adult novel trilogy into a four-film series that would split the final book into two films.
The first film “Divergent” was a decent success, pulling in $288.9 million at the global box-office off an $88 million budget. The second film “Insurgent” cost a little more at $110 million and pulled in a comparable $297.3 million. Both pulled in poor reviews.
The third film however was a major dud, taking in $179 million on from a budget that was pushing past $110 million along with scathing reviews and criticism from even members of its cast.
Plans for a fourth film titled “Ascendant” were hit by massive budget cuts and were dropped in favor of reconfiguring the project as a telemovie and spin-off series – those ideas were then scrapped and the franchise effectively ended.
In a new interview with People magazine, Roth said she has come to accept the film series is over and explained how she came to terms with it:
“I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That was why that decision was made. But at that point, I think I always felt peace about it just because I knew the movies were taking a different track than the books, and if you change the lead up, you change the ending. So I kind of felt like at that point … I feel like that third movie, I don’t know, there’s a lot we could talk about with it. But it’s its own thing. It feels complete to me, relatively speaking, because what does that even mean at that point?”
Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Ashley Judd, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn and Ansel Elgort starred in the films which have mostly been forgotten these days.
These comments follow director Francis Lawrence’s comments recently in which he says he “totally regrets” dividing the final book into two films.
