The movie version of Veronica Roth’s book Divergant hit cinemas yesterday after a less than favourable reaction from the critics. But despite the reviews, Roth says she’s pleased with the movie adaptation of her popular novel, which – it has recently been announce – will get a sequel. 

DivergentThe cast of Divergent discuss the bad reviews

“My anxieties were just the standard anxieties of any author who hands over their work to be adapted. But, I know from the second the book hits the shelf, it stops belonging to the person who wrote it. It starts belonging to everyone who reads it. So I was pretty well practiced in letting it go a little bit, which is a good thing,” Roth said. 

It was director Neil Burger - the writer and director of “The Illusionist”  - who allayed Roths’ feats. “The challenge for me was fitting all that story into a movie because we loved the story and all of the different characters and all the different events,” explained Burger. But the movie is a different beast than the book. It has different dramatic needs. There are a lot of events in the movie and they are compressed. It has kind of a crazy pace because of that." (Seattle Times)

Financially, the film seems to be doing okay – not brilliant, but okay - which is everything to the studio. But for Roth and Burger, the critical panning won’t have gone down easily. Divergent has accumulated a pretty rotten score of 40%, earning a slew of negative reviews. 

MORE: Kate Winslet did Divergent stunts while pregnant

The sequel to the adaptation – ‘Insurgent’ - was previously scheduled for a March 2015 release date with director Robert Schwentke taking over for Burger as director, with a script from Brian Duffield and Akiva Goldsman.

"We're off to a great start with strong numbers from all regions of the country, urban, suburban and rural alike," said Jon Feltheimer, the CEO of Summit's parent company, Lionsgate, in a statement. "We're confident that 'Divergent' is on its way to becoming another important franchise for us, and we have just greenlighted the second film, 'Insurgent.'"

Watch the trailer for Divergent here: