Divergent's final film Ascendant is having its budget slashed after Allegiant flops

[ntscuser]

Has Tris had her time?



Bad news for fans of the Divergent series - the budget for next year's Ascendant has been slashed thanks to Allegiant's poor box office performance last weekend.

Raking in just $29 million over its opening weekend in the US, with a $110 million budget, Allegiant was down 44% compared compared to previous instalment Insurgent (2015), which made $52.3 million last year.

The first Divergent (2014) made $54.6 million on debut in 2014.

The Divergent films are based on Veronica Roth's bestselling young adult science fiction novels.

No doubt Lionsgate was hoping its female-audience-focused action franchise would replicate the success of The Hunger Games and Twilight.

In both of those series, the final books were split into two films - Breaking Dawn Part 1 and 2 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and 2.

And the studio has tried to do the same with the Divergent trilogy by breaking the third book Allegiant into two films.

But according to The Hollywood Reporter, the budget of that final instalment is now set to be trimmed by "several millions of dollars" at least. Ouch.

The dystopian dramas star Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts and Zoe Kravitz. The first two also starred Kate Winslet.

Sure,the cast is pretty A-List, but Shailene doesn't have the success or global fame of Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence or - at the time of Twilight - Kristen Stewart. And where those two had mammoth promotion in the months leading up to the movie's releases, this month's Allegiant went completely under the radar.

Let's see how this one battles it out.

The Divergent Series: Ascendant is still being written and is due to start filming this summer, with a slated release date of June 2017.