Man, this young adult dystopian franchises are getting killed off
as if they were in their own Hunger Games!
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of The Divergent Series: Allegiant!
Twilight is the franchise that built Summit, and the reason that Lionsgate acquired Summit.
Then as that three billion plus franchise came to a close, Lionsgate was able to flawlessly
transition over to The Hunger Games, it's new bread and butter. But fast forward to
today, and Lionsgate is not only struggling to keep The Hunger Games going FOREVER with
a theme park and prequels, but they have no new franchise to transition to while The Hunger
Games is on "break". The Divergent films haven't lost ground YET but they also don't seem to
have any momentum - and worrisome is the industry projection that this latest installment will
open with ten million less than the first two movies. Now You See Me and John Wick both
have franchise potential, but can they are they capable of making Twilight and Hunger
Games money? It seems unlikely, especially since Mockingjay Part 2 couldn't even make
Hunger Games money - and it's a Hunger Games movie! Divergent was supposed to inherit the
mantle of its predecessors Twilight and The Hunger Games, but perhaps it's too similar
to The Hunger Games, whereas that franchise was enough of a departure from Twilight to
keep the core fanbase interested. It also might all boil down to star power, with Shailene
Woodley and Theo James simply no match for Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in their
heyday, nor Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. And it's not just Lionsgate that's struggling
with this material, as The Maze Runner sequel seriously underperformed last year. The thing
is, all major studios need franchises as a financial foundation - especially in today's
Hollywood. Even animation studios today live or die by their franchises. So Lionsgate NEEDS
Divergent to stay alive, but desperation doesn't always lead to the best business decisions.
For instance, Insurgent director Robert Schwentke was supposed to finish out the franchise,
but it was recently announced that after Allegiant he's out, "too tired" to direct Ascendent.
So now that movie, still director-less, just had to be pushed back several months to June
2017, making it the first only movie in the franchise not to be released in March. And
let's not forget that like The Hunger Games, this is another trilogy where not only has
the final book been split into two seperate movies, but where fans were unhappy with the
final book to begin with! That just shows how scared studios have become of fans - they're
not even willing to change endings that the fans hated!