In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate heads Patrick Wachsberger and Rob Friedman spoke about splitting Allegiant into two movies. Last month, the announcement was made about the plans to cut Divergent finale into two parts. Read the interview below.
Both men said 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.”
Now that Divergent has become an established franchise possibility with the first movie’s $250 million global success, the marketing approach to the sequel, Insurgent was commented to be different.
“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 - with Insurgent beginning filming in the next few weeks under the direction of Robert Schwentke.
What do you think about Allegiant being split?