Lionsgate’s big-screen adaptation of Veronica Roth’s Divergent series may not have reached the dizzying heights of the company’s other YA juggernaut, The Hunger Games, but the property has still managed to carve out an audience of its own to warrant Lionsgate seeing the series through to its two-part conclusion, Allegiant.
With little less than a year until the arrival of Part I, The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the studio is on the verge of snapping up its first new addition to the anticipated finale: The Newsroom‘s Jeff Daniels. It’s understood that the part reserved for the Dumb and Dumber star is a key role, one which will stretch across both installments.
Filming on Allegiant – Part I is due to get underway next month, with RIPD helmer Robert Schwentke returning at the helm following his work on Insurgent. Whether or not Schwentke returns to close out the cinematic franchise remains to be seen, as Lionsgate has no plans to film both parts back to back at this time. Currently, the conclusive chapter is tentatively slated for a release in 2017.
As for Jeff Daniels, the actor has been juggling a couple of notable projects of late, and has all but wrapped up work on Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic alongside Michael Fassbender, not to mention Ridley Scott’s The Martian. Both films are due to release in November of this year.
Circling back to the Divergent series and from what we gather, Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher and Pouya Shahbazian are on board to produce Allegiant – Part I, which will look to tee up Tris and Four’s swan song on March 18, 2016.