With expectations high as well as drought, Lionsgate Studios clearly has made an effort to make Divergent the next big YA franchise. The way it is showing that is by boldly moving ahead with the production of the second film based on the sophomore novel in Veronica Roth’s trilogy. The bizzare part of all of this is the fact that they announced plans to shoot the second film during the summer of 2014 just 2 and a half weeks before the release of the first film. Lots of people were very skeptical about this move because in addition to the movie not being released yet, the reviews from critics were less than satisfactory. Critics sited their displeasure with the film calling it a rip-off of other young adult adaptions and criticized it’s pacing and lengths. However, reviews and comments from fans and people who have read the book have expressed their happiness of the finished product saying the film stayed true to the source material and that the actors portrayed their characters well.
But good news has occurred recently, Divergent had a very strong showing at the box office grabbing the #1 spot with an estimated gross of $56 million dollars. With this performance at the box office despite the mixed critical reception, this justifies and supports Lionsgate’s accelerated push of the franchise. The second film “Insurgent” is scheduled to go into production in May 2014 with a slated release date of March 20th, 2015. As “Divergent” looks to continue a solid run at the box office, fans wait eagerly to board the train for the next installment of the dubbed “Next Hunger Games”.