Does 'Divergent' Deserve 3 Sequels?

Although it's performed respectably at the box office, "Divergent" has yet to prove that it's the launch of a new blockbuster young-adult film franchise. That's not stopping its producers from following the current practice of thoroughly milking the promise of any new book-based movie franchise.

This week, Lionsgate head Michael Burns announced that "Allegiant," the episode of the franchise based on the final book in Veronica Roth's trilogy, will be split into two movies. It's not surprising, given that all tentpole YA lit-based franchises in recent years—"Harry Potter," "Twilight," "The Hunger Games"—have followed the model of building an audience through the initial installments and then splitting the series' final book into two films, thereby, in theory, at least doubling ticket sales for the last, and hopefully highly anticipated, episode.

The book-splitting trend has become so pervasive that it happens whether it makes any artistic sense or not. Peter Jackson, whose "Lord of the Rings" trilogy hit screens before anyone had thought of splitting it into four or more films, decided to turn his adaptation of "The Hobbit" into not two, but three films, despite the fact that the relatively slight book didn't seem to demand more than one. The result is a heavily padded trilogy filled with plot points and characters not present in the original book.

The question is whether it's possible to know this early in the game whether or not "Divergent" deserves to be drawn out. The franchise's first film opened fairly strong, but it didn't gross as much as the first "Twilight" film did in its first weekend. Worse, "Divergent" took in only about 57% of the gross of the first "Harry Potter," and the first "Hunger Games" film took in nearly three times as much at its opening as "Divergent" did. At this point, it's very much not a given that "Divergent" will perform nearly as well as any of those franchises over the long term. What happens if "Insurgent," the next installment, disappoints? Will it still make sense to gamble that "Allegiant" will be popular enough to carry two films? It seems to be a gamble that Lionsgate is willing to take.