before she realized it wasn’t working. For several years, then, she put the story aside.
Cast members from all of the factions mill about in an opening scene of Divergent.
A young Veronica Roth was destined to be a writer.
Fast-forward to Roth’s senior year at Northwestern University, where she was studying creative writing. She had always loved science fiction and fantasy, as well as young adult novels, including The Giver and Ender’s Game. For her coursework, though, she was writing nothing of the sort. Few of the other students shared her interest in these genres, and her assignments required a different kind of voice. Roth still worked on her pet projects, during late nights or over vacations, but she didn’t share them with her classmates.
That year, Roth decided the story about Tobias needed an overhaul. Tobias would remain a character, but the story would be told from a different point of view, that of a strong and unyielding Abnegation girl named Tris.
“I’m not really sure why it didn’t work with Four as the protagonist,” says Roth. “I think part of it is that it’s a little more interesting to tell the story of a young woman leaving a perfectly safe, very controlled environment, and going into an incredibly dangerous and risky one. There is something, given our cultural climate, that makes that a more interesting story. We might expect an impetuous young man to join Dauntless, so that wouldn’t be surprising to us. But a young woman choosing Dauntless—especially a very small young woman—this is crazy! So maybe that’s why the story ultimately worked when I chose Tris as the narrator.”
After she imagined Tris, Roth’s disparate ideas suddenly came together into a compelling whole. Roth remembers, “I was pulled in by Tris. I was fascinated by her voice, and I first wanted to create the circumstances in which that voice emerged, and then see what she could tell me about what was happening in her world.” Undistracted by schoolwork, Roth focused on this project over winter break, and it rapidly grew to the length of a novel.
Then, in storybook fashion, things changed very dramatically for Veronica Roth. Some months before this, she had attended a writers’ conference, connected with a literary agent—Joanna Volpe—and submitted a manuscript to her, which Volpe ultimately rejected. When the story of Tris and Four was finished, though, Roth sent it to Volpe first. Within one month, Volpe agreed to represent Roth and also sold the rights for the entire Divergent trilogy (which was not written yet) to Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Not bad for an author who was about to graduate from college.
Arriving at the height of a red-hot moment for dystopian young adult fiction, and offering just the right balance of full-throttle action and powerful romance, the book was a sensation before it was even published. Buzz built within the publishing company as editors Molly O’Neill and Katherine Tegen shared the manuscript with their marketing and sales teams. Booksellers and librarians devoured the advance copies, certain they were reading the next big thing. Roth stoked the excitement as well, with her candid and approachable blog. When the book was finally published in May 2011, it debuted at number six on the New York Times Best Sellers list and kept climbing steadily to the top spot.
By then, a film was already in the works.
Author Veronica Roth’s first visit to her publisher’s headquarters in New York City.
Divergent’s debut on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
Author Veronica Roth with producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher.
ENTER HOLLYWOOD
Red Wagon Entertainment producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher came upon the manuscript before it was published and were smitten with what they read. They immediately brought the book to Gillian Bohrer, Executive Vice President of Production and Development at Lionsgate. Gillian remembers reading Divergent for the first time one weekend in January 2011. As the book wasn’t published yet, she was reading photocopied pages in a coffee shop, and the page that described Tris’s decision at the Choosing Ceremony was . . . missing. “I had to know what happened!” says Bohrer. “I read ahead and figured it out. And then I couldn’t stop reading. I just couldn’t put it down.”
That Monday morning, she started spreading the word at Summit. “I knew the story would break through to a movie audience,” Bohrer remembers. “It had so many themes that would resonate with teens, from challenging your limits to finding your own family. Plus it had these amazing set pieces, from the Choosing Ceremony to the Ferris wheel and the zip lining. . . . I could see them in my head, just when I was reading, and I knew they would make for a fantastic film.”
When Summit’s Erik Feig was in New York a few weeks later, he met with Veronica Roth’s film rights manager, Pouya Shahbazian. “Erik Feig came in with a game plan,” Shahbazian says. “A playbook. He loved the novel, and Summit knew to a T what it would take to make Divergent into a larger franchise.” Two months before the novel was published and became an immediate success, Shahbazian and Red Wagon sold the movie rights to Summit, with partners Red Wagon attached to produce. “Veronica’s books are so well written and the characters are so engaging,” says Rob Friedman, cochairman of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, “that readers become captivated from the very first page. As a studio, it is stories and the characters found in book series like Divergent, which make for great source material for film. When you have great content, it becomes easier to bring it to life. We are fortunate that Veronica chose Summit Entertainment to be a partner to create a visual experience that matches what she has worked tirelessly to create. We look forward to delivering what we collectively have worked on with the release of Divergent and can’t wait to see subsequent films based on the franchise.”
Summit Entertainment was the studio behind the wildly successful Twilight films as well as The Hurt Locker, the 2010 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. It had a proven track record of making high-quality films as well as lush adaptations of young adult properties. And the Red Wagon producers, Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher, had been in the business for decades, creating classic films from Gladiator to The Great Gatsby.
Unquestionably, Roth and Divergent were in good hands.
Author Veronica Roth with producer Lucy Fisher.
Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James) explore Four’s fear landscape.
Doug Wick also remembers reading the book for the first time and being struck by its epic reach. Of the many potential projects he was considering at the time, Divergent stood out right away. He explains, “For me, it always starts
