THE ILLUSIONIST Director to take on DIVERGENT
Neil Burger, the director of The Illusionist and Limitless, is in talks to direct Summit Entertainment's big screen adaptation of the sci-fi futuristic book Divergent. Burger was attached to direct the Uncharted adaptation, but has since dropped out of the project, which recently got a couple of new screenwriters.
Like The Hunger Games, the story features teen on teen violence, and the story centers on a 16-year-old girl named Beatrice Prior, who lives in a world where society is divided into five factions that each represent a particular virtue: honesty, selflessness, bravery, peacefulness and intelligence.
Sounds like an interesting premise that has potential. This is the first book in a trilogy that author Veronica Roth has planned, the studio also has the rights to the sequel, Insurgent. The third book won't be released until fall of next year. If Burger takes the project it will be his first film since Limitless. I've liked the films that Burger has made, and I think this project is a good fit for his directing style.
Last summer Snow White and the Huntsman screenwriter Evan Daugherty was hired to write the screenplay. If everything goes as planned Summit wants to start production in March, and release the film in the first quarter of 2014.
Have you read the book? If so do you think it will make for a good movie?
Here's the description of the book:
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.