In the mad rush to cash in on the success of The Hunger Games, Divergent seemed to be doing well. Divergent and Insurgent, stories of teens in a dystopia rebelling against their poorly explained caste system, made tidy sums and the series looked like a winner for Lionsgate. At least until the third one came along, which apparently has done so badly it doomed the chances of the fourth movie seeing a theatrical release.
Allegiant, the third movie in the series, arrived in March and immediately became yet another sequel no one went to see in a 2016 full of them. Normally that would be the end of it, except that it’s one of those two-part finales Hollywood loves turning the final movie of a YA series into, so now Lionsgate has a problem.
According to Variety , the solution is to make Ascendant, the finale, into a TV movie, and use it as a backdoor pilot to launch a TV series. There’s one small problem with that strategy, though, as Lionsgate may not be able to get any of the cast back for a TV movie. It’s also not clear which network, whether broadcast or streaming, would be interested in picking up this theoretical series in the first place.
Really, maybe it’s just time to let this one slip into pop culture obscurity. Consider that according to the box office, this franchise lost half its U.S. audience in the space of a year. True, opening a week before Batman v Superman probably didn’t help, but even so, that’s not great math to try and launch a TV series with, especially as the CW has the whole dystopian teenage drama thing fairly well covered. Really, the best lesson to learn here is don’t split your finale into two movies. Hopefully the rest of Hollywood is taking notes.
(via Variety)