Divergent final movie cancelled- now heading to TV

The Divergent film series is in a major spin, and the finale is now set to debut on the smaller screen and spin off into a series.

Veronica Roth's Divergent book trilogy is a pretty good example of Young Adult fiction with a canny lead and a ballsy finale. The movie adaptations to date have manage to capture some elements of the books, with the help of a decent cast led by Shailene Woodley, but the decision to split the last chapter into two parts left Allegiant feeling more than a little undercooked.

The result was a rather pretty sci-fi action flick which cost over 110 million dollars and earned just under 180 million. That's a chunk less than either of the previous entries, and Lionsgate has decided to take drastic action.

Now the final chapter, called Ascendent (which wasn't the title of one of Roth's books) is going to be made as a TV movie instead, and the hope is that it will set up a spin off TV series- according to Variety.

That's a pretty major move, clearly looking to cut costs and retain some of their fans, potentially drawing them into a long running small screen franchise. And it's also potentially very risky as the well appointed cast is unlikely to make the transition and cramming the biggest and most spectacular episode into a TV budget could leave the finale feeling less than satisfying.

As for the spin off, the future of that will depend heavily on how the TV movie does and also how Lionsgate spins the whole situation which right now sounds like a total disaster.

Ascendent was planned for a June 2017 release but that's pretty unlikely at this point. More as we get it.