The Mistake They Made On Allegiant, According To The Studio Head

I don't think the disappointing box office of Allegiant can be explained by just one thing. There are many factors that came together.

For a start, there's the general trend of movies based on YA movies earning less with their sequels. The Hunger Games's box office declined with Mockingjay Part 1 and then declined further with Mockingjay Part 2, The Maze Runner box office declined with The Scorch Trials. The Divergent series is just doing what every other YA series on the market is also doing. This trend is probably caused by the market being flooded by YA dystopias and YA fans growing out of the intended demographic. Divergent the book was published in 2011 and 5 years is a long time to a teenage audience. A whole new crop of teens with different tastes has grown up now.

Then there's also significant fluctuations in Shailene Woodley's star power. After The Fault in Our Stars was released in June 2014, Woodley's star power was incredibly high. This helped prop up Insurgent which was released only 9 months later. But Woodley hasn't appeared in any other hits since then and her star has faded somewhat. Some box office analysts have argued that the box office results for Insurgent were over-inflated by Woodley's temporary "it girl" status and that were it not for The Fault in Our Stars, Insurgent would have experienced a much bigger drop at the box office. If Insurgent had experienced that steeper predicted drop, it probably would have meant Lionsgate would have moderately reduced the budget for Allegiant and had more realistic expectations for its box office performance.

There's also the fact that Allegiant wasn't released in 3D but Insurgent was. The extra price added to 3D tickets inflated Insurgent's box office total and made the series seem healthier than it actually was. If Allegiant had been released in 3D, it would have got a bump in box office and would not have seen like so steep a drop from the previous entry.

In addition, the movie was based on the least-liked book of Veronica Roth's trilogy and the book had already garnered fan backlash. Likewise, the trend of splitting final books into two film adaptations was being viewed as increasingly negative because of the underwhelming Hobbit movies and Hunger Games finale.

And there's also the poor critical reception to consider. Lionsgate's decision to release the film on different dates depending on local school holidays meant that multiple negative reviews of Allegiant had been posted days or weeks before the movie was released in many regions. This meant that the film had already become perceived as a "flop" before most audience members had even seen it. If the film had been released on the same day everywhere and reviews were embargoed, it's likely that Allegiant would have had a bigger opening. Just think about how the box office tracking figures for Allegiant dropped steadily from week to week prior to the film's release - 2 weeks before release the film was on track to earn $40-45 million in its opening weekend, the next week estimates dropped to $30-40 million, and the film wound up grossing just $29 million upon release.

And then there's the poor quality of the film itself. Allegiant got an average B Cinemascore which is lower than Divergent's A and Insurgent's A-, which indicates that audiences didn't enjoy it as much. Putting aside whether you personally liked the film or not, Cinemascore is a good indicator of how much audiences in general like a film. (A means good, B means okay, C means poor. Films rarely score below C.). Audiences just didn't think Allegiant was as good at the previous two. The film being rushed into production to hit a release date likely contributed to its poor quality. Certainly, that's what Shailene Woodley thinks. Woodley has reportedly said she was dissatisfied with the script before the movie went into production. Woodley's complaints about the poor quality of the script is also reportedly part of the reason why Allegiant's director was replaced.

There are probably lots of other reasons too. I don't think there's much point in trying to boil down Allegiant's performance to one single issue. Lots of things contributed.