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SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT STARTS PRODUCTION ON FUTURISTIC ACTION ADVENTURE "DIVERGENT"

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SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT STARTS PRODUCTION ON FUTURISTIC ACTION ADVENTURE "DIVERGENT"

Santa Monica, CA – April 8, 2013 – Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE® (NYSE: LGF) company, announced today that principal photography has commenced in Chicago on the highly anticipated feature film adaptation of DIVERGENT, starring Golden Globe nominated Shailene Woodley, Theo James, and Academy Award® winner Kate Winslet. The studio also announced that Ray Stevenson and Mekhi Phifer will join a stellar young cast including Maggie Q, Jai Courtney, Miles Teller, Zoë Kravitz, Ansel Elgort, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Ben Lamb, Christian Madsen, and Amy Newbold.  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.  The original draft of the script was written by Evan Daugherty.  Douglas 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, alongside John J. Kelly.  Summit will release the film theatrically in North America in THE HUNGER GAMES slot on Friday, March 21, 2014.

DIVERGENT is 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 first time author Veronica Roth 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 3 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.

DIVERGENT marks another strategic foray for Summit into producing material for young adults, building on Summit and corporate parent Lionsgate’s leadership in the young-adult genre.  Summit’s TWILIGHT SAGA franchise has grossed more than $3.3 billion at the worldwide box office, and the first film of Lionsgate’s THE HUNGER GAMES franchise is the 13th highest-grossing North American release of all time.

Erik Feig, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group’s President of Production, and Gillian Bohrer, Lionsgate’s SVP of Production, are overseeing the project for the studio.
 

About Summit Entertainment

Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE® company, is a worldwide theatrical motion picture development, financing, production and distribution studio.  The company handles all aspects of marketing and distribution for both its own internally developed motion pictures as well as acquired pictures.  Summit also represents international sales for both its own slate and third party product.

About Lionsgate

Lionsgate is a leading global entertainment company with a strong and diversified presence in motion picture production and distribution, television programming and syndication, home entertainment, family entertainment, digital distribution, new channel platforms and international distribution and sales. The Company has built a strong television presence in production of primetime cable and broadcast network series, distribution and syndication of programming and an array of channel assets. Lionsgate currently has 28 shows on 20 networks spanning its primetime production, distribution and syndication businesses, including such critically-acclaimed hits as the multiple Emmy Award-winning Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie, the new comedy Anger Management, the network series Nashville, the syndication successes Tyler Perry's House of Payne, its spinoff Meet the Browns, For Better Or Worse, The Wendy Williams Show, Are We There Yet? and the upcoming Orange Is The New Black, an original series for Netflix.

Its feature film business has been fueled by such recent successes as the blockbuster first installment of The Hunger Games franchise, the 13th highest-grossing North American release of all time, The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn – Part 2, which has grossed more than $800 million at the worldwide box office, Warm Bodies, Texas Chainsaw 3D, The Expendables 2, The Possession, Sinister, The Cabin in the Woods, Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection and Arbitrage. With the January 2012 acquisition of Summit Entertainment, the Company has now added the blockbuster Twilight Saga, which has grossed more than $3.3 billion at the worldwide box office, to its current slate, giving the Company the two premier young adult franchises in the world.

Lionsgate's home entertainment business is an industry leader in box office-to-DVD and box office-to-VOD revenue conversion rate. Lionsgate handles a prestigious and prolific library of approximately 15,000 motion picture and television titles that is an important source of recurring revenue and serves as the foundation for the growth of the Company's core businesses. The Lionsgate and Summit brands remain synonymous with original, daring, quality entertainment in markets around the world.

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