Casting news for the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’ has been streaming in over the past months, and the reveals of the leads and supporting cast have been gearing up excitement for book fans to watch this action-packed tale come to life on the big screen. Well, we’ve got even better news for excited fans — the ‘Divergent’ series is officially a film franchise.
Summit Entertainment has just secured relative newcomer Brian Duffield (‘Jane Got a Gun’) to pen the script adaptation of the second book in the series, ‘Insurgent.’ This is ambitious news when you consider the second film in the ‘Twilight’ series, ‘New Moon,’ wasn’t greenlit by Summit until the success of ‘Twilight’s’ opening weekend. Is this early optimism for the franchise’s success, or simply the winds of change that teens will shell out for a franchise proven by book sales to be widely successful? The first two books combined have sold over 3 million copies, with the third installment, ‘Allegiant,’ to hit book stores in October of this year.
In ‘Divergent,’ teenagers are divided up into five factions where they will live out the rest of their lives: Abnegation, Erudite, Amity, Candor, and Dauntless. Our heroine Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) is discovered in secret to be Divergent — someone with traits which of two or more factions. Keeping this potentially treasonous fact a secret between her and her furtive tester, she joins Dauntless, the brave, and soon learns that the government behind the factions isn’t as peaceful as the population in the five factions are led to believe.
Without spoiling a movie that has yet to release, ‘Insurgent’ picks up immediately where ‘Divergent’ left off, with even greater stresses on the horizon than our heroes could have ever imagined.
‘Divergent’ is set to release to theaters March 21, 2014.
