It's always good when a studio is willing to admit what everybody else already knew: that one of their films sucked ass. That's what Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer did during a conference call when he said this in regards to The Divergent Series: Allegiant, which was a resounding flop no matter how you want to measure it...
"Maybe we rushed the third movie a bit instead of taking our time with it. We wanted to hit a date.”
This is the state of the franchise-obsessed movie industry today, when establishing a rapid fire release pattern is put ahead of careful planning and execution. The Divergent movies got off to a decent if unremarkable start just two years ago. Think about that; three movies have already been rushed out in that short span of time.
The first two movies totaled just short of $300M worldwide each, which is pretty low by YA standards, while this year's Allegiant only mustered up $170M. The amount was so low that Lionsgate cut the budget for the fourth and final film, Ascendant. The rushed production schedule also took a toll on director Robert Schwentke, who dropped out and was replaced by Lee Toland Krieger. The film is still set to open on June 9th 2017, but at this point nobody views it as anything other than a studio commitment. [TheWrap]
