Veronica Roth’s latest book was just published today, April 7, and its film rights have already found a home. The Hollywood Reporter confirms Picturestart (“Unpregnant”) has acquired the rights to “Chosen Ones,” the first adult novel from the “Divergent” author.
Set in Chicago shortly after the world discovers magic is real, “Chosen Ones” “follows Sloane Andrews, one of the ‘Famous Five,’ then-teens who defeated a villain known as the Dark One more than a decade earlier and now, in adulthood, grapple with PTSD, fractured relationships, rabid media scrutiny and, worst of all, the prospect that their mission might not be finished yet after all.”
In a “Divergent” reunion, Roth will produce the film with Picturestart’s Erik Feig, and Pouya Shahbazian. Feig secured the rights to “Divergent” when he was heading Summit Entertainment, and Shahbazian produced the adaptation and its two sequels, “Insurgent” and “Allegiant.”
“Chosen Ones” is also now available on Audible, with a celebrity voice cast led by Dakota Fanning.
“It’s very much about this post-adolescent experience of entering the world and trying to navigate being an adult in the world,” Roth has said of “Chosen Ones.” “If you fight something evil when you are a teenager, you’re going to see it as very black and white. This guy’s a bad guy, and he needs to be stopped. It’s a very simplistic view of evil. And as you get older, you realize that situations and people are more complicated than that.” She explained, “So ‘Chosen Ones’ is meant to be unraveling my main character, Sloane’s, understanding of what happened to her before and also what’s happening to her now. How everything has become more gray and more weird and more muddled as she’s gotten older, because that’s the experience I had in my 20s, just realizing how complicated things are.”
Roth has sold over 42 million copies of her books. Along the with the “Divergent” series, her work includes the “Carve the Mark” duology and a story collection entitled “The End and Other Beginnings.”
Starring Shailene Woodley, the three “Divergent” movies grossed over $765 million worldwide.
