Shailene Woodley Makes Clear She's Diverging From 'Ascendant' as a TV Movie
After the Divergent franchise’s third outing, Allegiant, earned a disappointing $66 million during its domestic theatrical run last spring, Lionsgate announced in July that instead of continuing with its original plan to produce the fourth and final chapter, Ascendant, as a feature film, it would instead wrap the saga with a TV movie that would help launch a small-screen spinoff series. This news was not only surprising to its stars, but unwelcome as well, and it wasn’t long before headliner Shailene Woodley was not-so-subtly suggesting that she wasn’t game for the franchise’s new direction. Now, it appears she’s made her plans absolutely clear.
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While attending the premiere of her new HBO miniseries Big Little Lies at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater, Woodley told Vanity Fair that she will not be reprising her role as freedom-fighter heroine Tris in the concluding entry in the sci-fi series:
“No. I’m not going to be on the television show.”
While Lionsgate hasn’t yet responded to Woodley’s proclamation, and her co-stars (including Miles Teller) haven’t yet made their own plans clear, this is hardly a bombshell, given that Divergent’s transition to TV was driven not by creative motivations, but by financial ones. The big-screen adaptations of Veronica Roth’s novels have never achieved the popularity of the likeminded Hunger Games movies, and Allegiant’s particularly poor box-office showing further proved that fans had moved on from its cookie-cutter saga about pretty kids in a dystopian future rebelling against their tyrannical gray-haired adult overlords (in this case, that would be Kate Winslet).
Related: Some ‘Divergent’ Stars Expected to Opt Out as ‘Ascendant’ Shifts to a TV Movie
Plus, there was the looming issue of fans’ distaste for how the entire Divergent series wrapped up. Per EW.com, there was such an outcry over the conclusion to Veronica Ross’ final novel (which we won’t spoil here) that the author had to pen a lengthy blog post justifying her climactic creative decisions. And in 2015, the movies’ producers were (per Collider) still coy about revealing whether or not their big-screen versions would adhere to that much-debated ending. So it’s certainly possible that, in light of the financial factors, Ascendant‘s potential to further alienate fans helped motivate the studio to rethink its feature-film strategy.
How Lionsgate will refashion Ascendant without its lead actress remains to be seen. For now, Woodley can next be seen on TV — or, at least, HBO — in Little Big Lies, which premieres on Feb. 19.
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