The Big Picture
Dune recognizes that a single movie cannot capture the entirety of the massive source material, which led a two-part adaptation contingent on the success of the first film. Splitting a book into multiple movies without filming them simultaneously is a risky move, as seen with the failed Divergent series, where poor box office performance led to the cancelation of the final film. The approach taken with Divergent serves as a cautionary tale for future adaptations, emphasizing the importance of honoring the source material and avoiding purely commercial decisions.
The cast and crew of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune have been open about the fact that this single movie isn’t meant to be a whole adaptation of Frank Herbert’s original novel. In fact, this project is part of a larger two-part adaptation of this text, with the second part’s existence contingent on the box office of the first Dune. It’s a bold plan that recognizes Dune is such a massive piece of source material that it could never properly fit into a single motion picture. Still, while it’s the right move for adaptation purposes, it’s certainly a risky move to split one book across multiple movies that haven’t been filmed simultaneously. It has obviously worked well with Dune, with the second movie’s cast lined up and a synopsis of the plot recently released.
Alternatively, the worst-case scenario in splitting movie adaptations into multiple parts is that the first movie bombs, and you never get to finish up your expansive adaptation. If such an outcome sounds far-fetched, well, ask the folks behind the Divergent movies, who found themselves in that exact scenario when it came time to adapt the final Divergent book, Allegiant.
Divergent
In a world divided by factions based on virtues, Tris learns she’s Divergent and won’t fit in. When she discovers a plot to destroy Divergents, Tris and the mysterious Four must find out what makes Divergents dangerous before it’s too late.
Release Date March 14, 2014
Director Neil Burger
Rating PG-13
What Went Wrong With the ‘Divergent’ Series?
In executing this adaptation, the producers of Divergent opted to take a cue from the then-recent conclusion to the Harry Potter features and split one final book into two-part movies. In theory, such a solution would provide a win for everyone. Audiences get to see a more faithful take on a crucial piece of source material and producers get to wring one more movie out of a lucrative franchise. Mimicked by Twilight and The Hunger Games, it was inevitable Divergent would also go down this route for the Allegiant adaptations. Announced for 2016 and 2017 release dates, these two movies would be given the names Allegiant and Ascendant.
Initially, this plan seemed to be a sound one financially, if not exactly the best idea creatively (the Allegiant book is roughly the same length as the Insurgent book, making it hard to parse out why it needed two movies to adapt). Still, plans went ahead for the Divergent series to wrap up on a two-part finale, with the first half of this project starting filming in 2015 for a March 2016 release date. Later that year, it was announced that Insurgent and Allegiant director Robert Schwentke would be stepping down from helming Ascendant, with Leo Toland Kreiger coming on board to direct instead.
Initially, just a hiccup on the road to a June 2017 bow would, in hindsight, be a harbinger of problems to come. A few months after this director announcement, Allegiant was unleashed into movie theaters. The worst reviews of the franchise greeted its debut, but that wasn’t a shock given that none of the Divergent films were all that well-liked. What was surprising was how enormously Allegiant missed the mark at the box office. The film’s $66.1 million domestic take was only slightly ahead of the North American opening of the original Divergent. Worse, the worldwide haul of $179.2 million was nowhere near enough to recoup a budget that reportedly reached $142 million.
Image via Lionsgate
Such results would’ve been disappointing under any circumstances. However, they were especially disastrous here given that Allegiant was supposed to spawn an immediate sequel that would drop into theaters just 15 months later. Normally, this is the part of the story where one would just say all Divergent sequels were abandoned. However, Lionsgate wasn’t about to give up on a recognizable brand name, even one suffering from a serious case of the box office blahs. In July 2016, Lionsgate broke the news that Ascendant would be reconfigured into a TV movie that would air on Starz, a premium network that Lionsgate had acquired just a few weeks earlier.
In two years, the Divergent franchise had gone from being a big-screen franchise to one that was being relegated to the airwaves of Starz. Initially, plans and comments from Lionsgate brass pointed to this version of Ascendant as being roughly adherent to the continuity of the original Divergent movies, albeit on a significantly smaller budget. Though there were initial hopes of bringing back the cast of the movies for the project, Shailene Woodley made it apparent in early 2017 that she wouldn’t be a part of a version of Divergent that aired on Starz. Without the leading lady of the original films, an already peculiar plan was looking less and less likely to get off the ground.
The ‘Divergent’ Series Moves From the Big Screen to the Small Screen
Later on in 2017, the plans for this project further evolved when Starz revealed that the original writer and director of the Ascendant theatrical film would be in charge of reimagining the project as a TV series for the network. Though the crew of Ascendant was returning for the small screen, prospects for any of the familiar actors from the features (including Theo James and Miles Teller) returning for this iteration of the franchise seemed dim. By this point, it had been roughly 18 months since Allegiant had flopped at the box office and any demand for further Divergent movies was growing fainter and fainter.
Thus, it was no surprise when the end of 2018 brought news that this approach to Ascendant had been scrapped. The Divergent franchise was now well and truly dead. Hollywood is full of cynical approaches to franchise filmmaking. (One could even argue that this form of filmmaking is entirely built on cynical commerce.) However, the approach to adapting the Allegiant book was an especially egregious example of this phenomenon. Every step of the way, the people behind this series only looked at what was good for the bottom line and outside factors, rather than the demands of the source material or the filmmakers adapting it.
The initial plan to bring Allegiant to the screen across two movies, for example, was only done to mimic the box office glory of those final Harry Potter films. Meanwhile, the decision to bring Divergent to television wasn’t done because this story could be properly told through this particular medium. It was a way to build up extra synergy through Lionsgate’s film library and its new acquisition, Starz. It’s always a risky move to adapt one book across multiple films, but it’s an outright fool’s errand when the only thing motivating your adaptation decisions is issues of commerce rather than art.
The failure of this final Divergent movie provides a welcome blueprint for something like Dune. Meanwhile, Villeneuve has even lambasted attempts to use Dune as a vehicle to provide synergy for WarnerMedia-owned TV ventures. For this elaborate Frank Herbert adaptation as well as other future multi-film book adaptations, the calamity of the Allegiant project can provide a perfect blueprint for what not to do.
Divergent is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.
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