Kate Winslet Joins Divergent Cast
Summit Entertainment, a Lionsgate company, confirmed today that Kate Winslet will star as Jeanine Matthews in the studio’s futuristic action adventure Divergent. Starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James, the other confirmed cast members including Jai Courtney, Zoë Kravitz, Ansel Elgort and Maggie Q.
The futuristic action adventure, based on author Veronica Roth’s New York Times best seller, will be directed by Neil Burger from a script by Vanessa Taylor and commences principal photography this April in Chicago. The original draft of the script was written by Evan Daugherty. Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher are producing the project via their Red Wagon Entertainment banner along with Pouya Shahbazian. Red Wagon’s Rachel Shane is executive producing. Summit will release the film theatrically in North America in The Hunger Games slot on Friday, March 21, 2014.
Divergent is described as a thrilling adventure set in a future world where people are divided into distinct factions based on their personalities, Tris Prior (Woodley) is warned she is Divergent and will never fit into any one group. When she discovers a conspiracy to destroy all Divergents, she must find out what makes being Divergent so dangerous before it’s too late.
The extremely popular young adult novel Divergent was written by Roth, a first time author, and has topped the New York Times Best Sellers list ever since being published in May of 2011 by Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins Publishers. The book was written by Roth while she was earning her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University. She followed her first novel with the book Insurgent, which has also made its way to the #1 position on specific New York Times Best Sellers lists. To date, book sales are now over 2.6 million copies for both novels combined, and both titles are HarperCollins most successful e-books ever in regards to sales. The studio acquired the film rights to the novel in early 2011 several months before the book Divergent was published.
