THE DIVERGENT SERIES started off strong but the most recent film, which was the first part of a two-part finale, stumbled at the box office and wound up making over $100 million less than its predecessor. Lionsgate then scrambled to figure out what to do with the dying franchise which, as we found out yesterday, may mean that the final film in the series will skip the theater altogether and conclude on television. It's still early days yet but the plan would be to move from the TV movie directly into a standalone television series set in the same post-apocalyptic world. The storylines of the current cast would be finalized and a new cast would be introduced who would then keep the series going on either a traditional or streaming network.
With a course correction that large, you'd think that someone would have informed Shailene Woodley, the star of DIVERGENT, but no, she found out the same time we all did.
Honestly, I was on a plane when all that happened and I landed, and I’m like Whoa, what’s going on?! I need to talk and find out what the details are.
I'm sure that Lionsgate would like to keep Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort, and the rest of the gang onboard, but it's not totally clear if they'd be up for a TV movie, or, more importantly, if that sort of change would even fall under their existing contracts. A deal hasn't been finalized as to what direction THE DIVERGENT SERIES could go so anything could happen, but it's still a very strange turn of events. Who knows, perhaps this will prompt studios to reconsider splitting the final movies of their franchises into two parts. Probably not, but we can dream.
Shailene Woodley will next be seen in Oliver Stone's SNOWDEN alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt on September 16, 2016.