Ascendant Descends from the Big Screen to the Small Screen

Bad news Divergent movie fans. If you’ve been waiting to see Ascendant in theaters, you won’t like the latest news.

According to several media outlets, the last movie installment of the Divergent movie franchise, Ascendant, will no longer be made for the big screen. Instead, reports have surfaced that Lionsgate is in early negotiations to turn Ascendant into a television movie and use it a a springboard for a possible spin-off series.

Filming for the final chapter of the series was meant to begin shooting this summer as Ascendant was scheduled to debut in theaters in June of 2017.  According to Variety, where the news first broke, the new plan involves having the current cast resume their respective roles and introduce a new cast that would be the lead characters in the planned spin-off series.

So far there’s no word on if any of the cast including Theo James (Tobias/Four), Shailene Woodley (Tris), Ansel Elgort (Caleb) and Miles Teller (Peter), are on board with the new direction that is being potentially being taken with the franchise.

Many fans may ask why Lionsgate would consider this option and the answer is simple: money. Allegiant simply didn’t make enough money at the box office. The first two films in the franchise, Divergent and Insurgent sold very well at the box office, with Divergent raking in $150 million and Insurgent raking in $130 million domestically. Unfortunately for the studio, Allegiant wasn’t as well received by audiences as they had hoped, with the film only making $66 million domestically.

Sad to say that 2016 has not been very good to this film. Some of the problems the film has had so far include a generous filming budget cut and the loss of it’s director (you can read about that here.)

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