Author Veronica Roth has come to terms with the finale Divergent the film will never come true.
More than seven years have passed since then Allegiant, the third film in the franchise, debuted in theaters, adapting half of Roth’s book. Like Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games the final before him, Allegiant it was divided into two parts, although the second part (which will be titled Ascendant) was never made due to diminishing returns at the box office.
Roth tells PEOPLE he’s okay with how the movie franchise ended.
“I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That’s why that decision was made,” says Roth, 35. “But at that point, I think I always felt at peace with it just because I knew the movies were going a different path than the books, and if you change the opening, you change the ending. I kind of felt like at that moment… I feel like that third movie, I don’t know – there’s a lot we could talk about. But it’s a special thing. ”
“I feel complete, relatively speaking, because what does that even mean at that point?” she adds.
Of splitting the books into multiple movies, Roth says, “I just feel like it has to be a big, long book for it to make sense.”
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Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz in “Allegiant” (2016).
Murray Close/Lionsgate/courtesy Everett Collection
Ten years ago, when Allegiant released in 2013, Roth drew a lot of ire from fans for her decision to have her character Tris die at the end. Some readers went so far as to wish the author dead on social media, as Roth wrote in an essay about Salon 2021.
Roth says she’s no longer “afraid of the Internet” like she was back then — and has since revisited Divergent books, she has a new understanding of why people were upset with the direction she took the protagonist’s story.
“I recently re-listened to the series on audiobook and this was the first time I’ve re-experienced any of the books since almost Allegiant came out, because for a while it just reminded me of the internet, intense stress. I’m obviously much older, and I think I read Allegiant again, I understand better why there was such a strong reaction to this, just because I had that time and perspective,” she explains. “It’s interesting to think about.”
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“You can always see things you could have done better over time, when you’ve grown as a writer. That’s how I feel,” says Roth. “But now I can have a bit of fun with it. It’s not so bad. I was scared of the internet at the time, and now I joke with readers about it and I think we’ve all kind of processed it a little bit better at this point.”
Roth says she “chose the ending I thought would be the best at the time” and “was the best I could come up with.”
“It’s hard to look back and think about… there are a thousand things I would have written differently now that I’m older and more experienced, and that was my first series,” she says.
Fans never got to see the book’s fatal ending on screen. (Shailene Woodley played Tris in the films opposite Theo James as her love interest, Four.) Will the films use the same controversial conclusion?
Roth says, “I don’t think they had a very clear framework for me. I think maybe they were a little worried about telling me one way or another because maybe they were worried about what I was going to say or set expectations or something like that.”
The author has written several books since Divergent series, incl Poster girlnow in paperback, arriving in May, When among the crows. Roth still says, her Divergent the characters continue to live in her imagination.
“I’ll say, ‘What if that person had survived? What if a completely different plot had happened or a different perspective?’ But I don’t think about it that often,” she says.
“I have a lot of characters that live in my head now, but every so often. I think they were the strongest part of the show, the characters, so they’re the part that lives the most for me.”
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Source: HIS Education