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The first installment in a franchise that imploded spectacularly picks a side on Netflix

The first installment in a franchise that petered out and imploded in pretty spectacular fashion has rebounded on Netflix.

divergent

Arguably the single biggest Hollywood bandwagon of the 2000s and early 2010s was the rampant desire to turn any literary series with multiple books and a decent-sized fanbase into a blockbuster movie franchise.

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Despite dozens of them being plunged into development, the only ones that found continued and sustained success were Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, and The Maze Runner, with the vast majority of them failing to even make it past the first hurdle.

The Divergent Series did come mighty close, though, only to implode in spectacular fashion. Having earned a solid-if-unspectacular $765 million across the first three films, roping in a huge number of talented stars in the process, the fourth and final chapter was given a March 2017 release date with Lee Toland Krieger installed as director.

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However, it was canceled abruptly to leave Divergent on a cliffhanger, before plans were announced to end the story of Shailene Woodley’s Tris on television as part of an event miniseries. The only problem was that the actress wasn’t interested, so the project was ultimately canned, and the entire property vanished in a cloud of smoke.

If you want to see the intrepid heroine decide which of the five factions she wants to join in the dystopian world of Divergent, then you can do what many others have clearly been doing and check it out on Netflix, with FlixPatrol revealing the opening salvo has re-entered the platform’s global most-watched list.