In comments made during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate heads Patrick Wachsberger and Rob Friedman say they’re confident in their decision to split Allegiant into two movies.
Summit/Lionsgate announced last month that they would be cutting the Divergent finale into two halves for the theater. It’s a move that has been successfully pulled off with the Harry Potter and Twilight finales. Lionsgate has also announced plans to do it for the third and final Hunger Games book Mockingjay.
Wachsberger and Friedman say that Allegiant’s split is a good decision because farewells take more time. “One of the things we find in the last book [for any series] is that a lot of ends have to be wrapped up,” said Friedman. “They tend to be very dense. We felt the same way about Allegiant. There was more than enough material there to make two substantial, satisfying films.”
Related: Where should the Allegiant book be split?
They also commented on the Divergent sequel Insurgent and noted that they expect a different marketing technique. “It’s obviously a different story [than Divergent], and we don’t have to start from ground zero, explaining what Divergent is all about. The second film has a lot more action in it, so we’ll take it in a different direction.”
The next three Divergent movies are slated to hit theaters in March 2015, 2016, and 2017. Insurgent is slated to begin filming in the next few weeks under the direction of Robert Schwentke.
Thanks to THR for the quotes!
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.