Sad news: Shailene Woodley isn’t coming back for the final “Divergent” movie, and we get it

While not necessarily bad news, it was certainly interesting news when we learned that the last Divergent movie, Ascendant, would be skipping theaters and instead heading to television. Still, nothing bad about that, as the bigger Divergent ~plan~ was to make a TV movie, and then spin-off the YA franchise as a TV show. Honestly, this sounds pretty good to us.

However, this is kind of a drastic move for a movie to jump from the silver screen to the small screen, and the stars of the film series were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about this switch. At the time, Shailene Woodley (who’s starred in the last three movies as heroine, Tris), mentioned that, at the time, she was in the dark about everything.

“I honestly have no idea what’s going on with Divergent,” she commented during July’s Comic-Con. “I know as much as you do.”

Well, now that the Divergent dust has settled, and she’s clearly learned a lot more about the project, she’s still not too thrilled. In a recent interview with Screen Rant, while promoting her upcoming movie Snowden, she seems to have made her peace with the idea, and she’s going to walk away from it.

“I didn’t sign up to be in a television show,” she explained. “Out of respect to the studio and everyone in involved, they may have changed their mind and may be doing something different, but I’m not necessarily interested in doing a television show.

This is by no means a final decision, but hearing Woodley’s comments, it feels like she’s made up her mind. And we get that. It’d be like if your friends invited you over for dinner and PROMISED you pizza, and then you showed up and instead they had ordered a bunch of kale salads, you’d be like “But I was made to understand there’d be pizza here.” You’d be pretty upset, and might want to leave their house and go find some pizza, you know?

Woodley had previously signed on to do the final Divergent movie, so that tiny sliver of a chance she’ll return still exists. But more than likely, the role of Tris — if Tris even makes it into the movie/TV show — will have to be recast.