Summit has officially announced a release date for what they hope is the start of their next Twilight-level franchise. We've known for a while now that the studio has been developing an adaptation of Veronica Roth's novel Divergent, but now they have said that the movie will be in theaters on March 21, 2014.
It is the first movie to be announced for that date, but it does have both Robert Stromberg's Maleficent and Alessandro Carloni's Me and My Shadow opening the week before (March 14th) and Darren Aronofsky's Noah opening the week after (March 28th). Variety reports that Lionsgate/Summit is planning to nab full control of the young-adult genre, having already found success with both Twilight and The Hunger Games.
Summit first purchased the rights to Roth's book back in February 2011 (it was published in May 2011) and they have been developing the adaptation since. While the release date is still far away, the studio has a lot of work to do in that time as they have not yet found a director or cast for the picture. A few weeks ago it was revealed that Limitless director Neil Burger had entered talks for the project after departing the video game movie Uncharted, but his name isn't mentioned in the new Variety report, meaning that a deal may not be done yet or the initial information could have been false.
The film is set in a futuristic, dystopian Chicago where society has been divided into five factions based on virtue - Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). At the age of 16 all teenagers must choose which virtue they want to dedicate their lives to and the protagonist, Beatrice Prior, must decide if she wants to stay with her family or with the boy she's fallen in love with. The book is the first of a planned trilogy with the second book, Insurgent, having come out this past May selling 1.5 million copies.
