Finished May 2019

The Sad Story of The Divergent Series

How an initially promising franchise of films imploded from the inside out

By Zac Langridge

Chapter Five: How to Kill a Franchise

The Divergent Series: Allegiant (again, to use its full title) was released on March the 18th, 2016 in the US and numerous other countries worldwide. For some reason, the release date was delayed in my home-country of New Zealand, as well as Australia, where it was released a month later. It was released head-to-head with Disney’s Zootopia, and mere weeks before the gargantuan premier of DC’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Clearly Lionsgate was still confident in their brand. They desperately needed the movie to be a hit, as the first months of 2016 were pretty desperate and embarrassing for the company. Almost all of their major tentpole films had bombed hard, losing huge amounts of money, and many of them had been received disastrously by audiences and critics. These films included Gods of Egypt, Norm of the North, Dirty Grandpa, The Choice and The Perfect Match.

If the reviews for Divergent had been mixed and the reviews for Insurgent had been negative, then the reviews for Allegiant were most certainly along the lines of scathing. The film was near-universally panned by critics, with the film currently sitting at a dismal Rotten Tomatoes score of 11%. While there were a few mildly positive notices, even fans of the series appeared to resign to the fact that a Divergent movie was now officially considered terrible. The unnecessary splitting of the final installment into two films was condemned, and seen as a sure sign of the cynicism that has consistently plagued Hollywood throughout its history. The film’s uninspired and lackluster direction was also slammed by reviewers, as the exhaustion/desperation of the director/screenwriters respectfully became ever so apparent onscreen. Even the cast's performances - which were initially considered to be the highlight of the series at a point - were now subject to merciless mauling by unimpressed audiences that had, by all accounts, finally decided to call it quits on the endless stream of mediocre YA adaptations. The audiences had simply had enough, as had the critics, and even hardcore fans were beginning to check out too.
And with this final round of poor reviews to add to the already long list of bad decisions and circumstances that resulted in Allegiant being put in the difficult position that it was, it all culminated in the film’s box-office. The film opened to a gross of $29.1 million in the US, almost 44% down from the $52.2 million opening that Insurgent experienced. The film’s total opening gross was $89 million, only making $54 million overseas. It was overrun by Zootopia, falling into second place on the box-office lists, and after it was all over it eventually managed to release a worldwide total of $179 million. With the film’s reported budget being $110 million, Allegiant had - to the surprise of some and no-one at the same time - become a box-office flop. To make matters even worse, it’s failure resulted in Lionsgate’s stock plummeting at least 3% after it’s release, something the struggling studio certainly didn’t need at the time. It wouldn’t have been so bad if all of Lionsgate’s previous attempts at creating franchises over the previous year hadn’t been disasters too. Yet here was the studio, hungry for franchises, but starved of results entirely. In essence, Allegiant was a disaster that dealt Lionsgate a serious blow.

Stars Woodley and James promote Allegiant at an event

Things moved slowly and painfully for The Divergent Series after that.
Less than a month after the film’s release, The Hollywood Reporter announced that the budget of the final movie, Ascendant had been slashed. This was clearly down to Lionsgate hesitating whether it was worth committing a huge budget to a film that may already be an even bigger dud than what they’d experienced already. Interestingly, the film’s original release date of March 2017 was pushed back to June, reportedly to accommodate Lionsgate’s Power Rangers reboot (or perhaps to give newcomer Lee Toland Krieger more time to prep the film).
And then the big news arrived in July: Ascendant wouldn’t be made into a theatrical film at all! It would instead be released as a television movie which would result as a springboard for a reported Divergent TV series that would act as a spinoff. According to Variety, “Lionsgate’s television group will handle production (....) The idea is to finalize the storylines involving the current cast and to introduce a new cast, who would then continue the series on either a traditional or streaming network.” It was huge news that outraged the core fanbase and surprised many onlookers - including the main cast themselves! Shailene Woodley herself was reportedly getting off a plane when she was told what was going on. Miles Teller also responded that the news “caught us all by surprise.” When other cast members such as Ansel Elgort, Octavia Spencer, Theo James and Jonny Weston came out stating that they also didn’t know what was going on, it became very clear that Lionsgate had little intentions of dedicating huge effort towards the new direction the franchise was apparently heading in. “At this point, it's a different set of circumstances (….) We'll see. I honestly haven't talked to anybody,” elaborated Teller at the time.

Slowly, as the months went by, the cast members began to announce that they wouldn’t be returning. Fans of the franchise (that had still stuck around) were losing hope fast. An optimistic report in August announced that the storyline of Ascendant would play out across ten to thirteen episodes, but it was immediately followed by Woodley claiming a month later that “Out of respect to the studio and everyone involved (….) I’m not necessarily interested in doing a television show.”
As time ticked by, the final installment of the franchise appeared to pass out of people’s minds. Finally - a year later - it was announced that the Lionsgate-owned TV network, Starz, would be bringing the finale to life. And then another year promptly passed with absolutely no news surrounding the film at all.
Finally, in December of 2018 - over two years after the film’s original planned release date - news broke that Starz had no further plans to release Ascendant as a TV movie, or a series.

And that was that! The Divergent franchise had officially had its plug silently, and unceremoniously pulled.

To be concluded...