Tag: divergent

10 Movies and TV Shows Like ‘The Hunger Games’
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While fans of The Hunger Games await the new new Hunger Games film from Lionsgate and Suzanne Collins’ forthcoming fifth novel in the saga (titled The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping), there are a myriad of movies and TV shows that volunteer as tribute to fill the void.

Whether seeking stories about similar dystopian worlds, young protagonists trying to survive amid hardships or action-packed adventures with a little bit of romance à la Katniss, Peeta and Gale, audiences can find satisfaction in films and TV shows that have similarities to The Hunger Games franchise.

From movies based on best-selling books like Divergent and The Maze Runner to international hit Squid Game, exploring a new kind of deadly arena and a viewing guilty pleasure, The Hunger Games fans may find that the odds are in their favor of finding something that resembles the four-film franchise.

Below, The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at 10 films and TV shows that offer similarities to The Hunger Games. THR also put together a definitive ranking of the films, including The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes prequel.
‘Divergent’

Image Credit: Everett Collection

Divergent was a dystopian franchise that shortly followed the release of the first Hunger Games film and shared a variety of similarities with the Panem world. Based on Veronica Roth’s trilogy of books first released in 2011, the films center on protagonist Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley), who lives in a post-apocalyptic dystopian Chicago. Throughout Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant, society is divided into five factions — Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful) and Erudite (the intelligent). After choosing to leave her family and transfer to the Dauntless faction, Tris learns more about herself and the dangerous secrets her society is trying to keep hidden. Then, despite finding herself in danger, a blooming romance also takes place. In addition to Woodley, the films star Theo James and Kate Winslet.

‘The Maze Runner’

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

Also adapted from bestselling book trilogy of the same name by James Dashner, 2014’s Maze Runner film starred Dylan O’Brien and was directed by Wes Ball. The dystopian science fiction story tells a similar survival narrative as The Hunger Games, with young protagonists left stranded and forced to survive. After teen Thomas (O’Brien) finds himself at the center of a giant labyrinth with no memory of his previous life, he and the other youths are forced to survive and find a way to escape the maze. The Maze Runner film was followed by Scorch Trials (2015) and The Death Cure (2018).

‘Battle Royale’

Image Credit: Anchor Bay/courtesy Everett Collection

The 2000 film Battle Royale featured a similar premise to The Hunger Games, in which ninth graders are sent to a deserted island and left to survive under dangerous circumstances. Despite being provided with weapons, a map and food, each child has an explosive collar fitted around their neck. If they break a rule, the collar explodes. Like The Hunger Games seeking a sole tribute, the young protagonists in Battle Royale have to kill each other to be the last one standing, which ultimately lets them leave the island.

‘Lord of the Flies’

Image Credit: Everett

Another book adaptation, the classic 1954 William Golding novel of the same name, Lord of the Flies tells a similar story of survival with young protagonists. After their plane crashes and leaves them stranded them on a remote island, a group of young boys must figure out how to survive. Though not a direct comparison, the story offers similar consequences and a fight to stay hopeful and remain alive like Katniss and others in the Hunger Games stories.

‘Squid Game’

Image Credit: Noh Juhan/Netflix

Rather than compete to be named the victor tribute, Netflix’s Squid Game has contestants fighting for money. In the Netflix series, individuals struggling with poverty or financial situations are invited to compete each other in kids games with a deadly twist. Despite having different motives, the competition resembles that of The Hunger Games‘ dangerous arena and life or death consquences.

‘The Society’

Image Credit: Seacia Pavao/Netflix

Though Netflix’s The Society only received one season, the series shared similarities with The Hunger Games. The Society takes place in a town where all the adults disappear without warning, leaving the teenagers to fend for themselves and create a new town. Things take a darker turn amid conflicts and threats which could impact the young protagonists’ chance of survival. Once again a group of young protagonists, like in The Hunger Games, are forced to survive on their own.

‘Silo’

In Apple TV+’s post-apocalyptic series starring Rebecca Ferguson, people live in a community like The Hunger Games‘ districts, only this community exists in a giant underground silo. In the silo is a society full of regulations designed to supposedly protect everyone. However, when the sheriff breaks a cardinal rule and people begin dying mysteriously, an engineer (Ferguson) begins discovering secrets about the silo. The story features similarities to The Hunger Games‘ Capitol, which attempts to present itself as a savior to the districts. But Katniss soon learns the dark secrets of President Snow and the dangerous regulations and way of life he and the Capitol are trying to uphold.

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Image Credit: Sophie Giraud/Hulu

For those seeking something akin to Katniss leading the resistance, look no further than Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The dark dystopian series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, centers on a totalitarian society that has subjected fertile women into sexual servitude. Like Katniss, Elisabeth Moss’s Offred/June is the series’ female heroine, who is forced to be a Handmaid as Katniss is forced to compete in the Hunger Games. However, both fight back against an oppressive system.

‘The Purge’

Image Credit: Courtesy of Universal Studios

The Purge may be a horror film, but with a storyline centered on a deadly event taking place every year, it’s not hard to see the underlying similarities with The Hunger Games. In the film, which also spawned a franchise including The Forever Purge, pictured above, the U.S. government allows 12-hour periods of time in which all illegal activity is legal. During this time, things are prone to become dangerous and deadly for many, leaving others to fight back and try to survive. The storyline can mirror that of The Hunger Games’ competition, in which tributes are forced to fight to the death in battles that also serve as spectacle.

‘The 100’

Image Credit: Everett

For fans of young protagonists in a dystopian world, The 100 is worth a watch. The CW show, which lasted for seven seasons, takes place in a time when it has been nearly 100 years since Earth was devastated by a nuclear apocalypse. The only survivors are the inhabitants of 12 international space stations. Years later, the leaders of space habitat the Ark exile a group of 100 juvenile prisoners to the Earth’s surface to test whether it’s habitable despite no one having set foot on the planet in nearly a century. With the characters attempting to be free from control of their leaders and forced to survive on their own, the story may seem like a Hunger Games-inspired scenario.
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Lexy Perez

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June 28, 2024
dirtier divergent pushy

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It just honestly seems like search engines are getting worse in general. Whether it’s the fact their primary focus is on ads, or maybe it’s the websites they link to just trying to show up, but it just seems like you can never actually find what you want when you search, just someone selling something.

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December 26, 2023
‘Divergent’ Author Says Film Franchise “Feels Complete to Me” Despite Scrapped Final Movie

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Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent trilogy, has made peace with the fourth and final movie in the franchise never getting made.

After the first two movies were released, Divergent (2014) and Insurgent (2015), the third book, Allegiant, was set to be split into two parts. But the second part, which was initially titled Ascendant, never came to fruition after part one was released in 2016.

In a recent interview with People magazine, Roth said she has now accepted the way the film series concluded.

“I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That was why that decision was made,” she explained. “But at that point, I think I always felt peace about it just because I knew the movies were taking a different track than the books, and if you change the lead up, you change the ending. So I kind of felt like at that point … I feel like that third movie, I don’t know, there’s a lot we could talk about with it. But it’s its own thing.”

She continued, “It feels complete to me, relatively speaking, because what does that even mean at that point?”

Set in a dystopian Chicago society, Roth’s sci-fi trilogy follows Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley), a young woman who learns she will never be able to fit into any of the world’s factions, which are based on virtues. She must navigate keeping her secrets to herself to stay alive as well as keep the city from falling apart.

The films also starred Theo James, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Ashley Judd, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn and Ansel Elgort.

Once Lionsgate saw diminishing box-office returns on Allegiant, they decided to first slash the budget on the fourth movie, Ascendant, but ultimately ended up dropping the feature completely. Lionsgate also looked into developing a TV take on Ascendant, but it also never panned out.

As for Roth’s thoughts on separating a book into multiple movies, she said, “I just feel like it’s got to be a big, long book in order for that to make sense.”

The author’s comments follow Hunger Games: Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence recently saying that he “totally regrets” dividing the final book into two films.

“In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode,” he told People. “But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn’t. Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.”

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October 20, 2023
Theo James Is Done Being Put in a Box

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Indeed James’s trajectory didn’t quite change with the end of Divergent; browse his IMDb and you won’t see him in any Oscar winners’ movies or on many Emmy-winning TV shows, the way things started out. “We are reliant on the whims of others,” he tells me at one point—but one reason why he launched his own production company, Untapped, in 2019. (His partner in the company is Andrew D. Corkin, who backed acclaimed indies including Martha Marcy May Marlene and We Are What We Are.) So far the banner has helped realize an eclectic batch of projects, including James’s well-received sci-fi vehicle Archive and Netflix’s new docuseries Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? In all this, James says he’s found a new way to look at an industry that he hasn’t always had the easiest time navigating. “You’re like, how will we make this? How will we package this? How does this work?” he says. “You start understanding everyone around you.”

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Whether you’ve seen it or not, James is in the midst of a period of varied, interesting work. The White Lotus being the most popular piece of the batch means more people are catching on right now, but the actor has appeared quite determined to break beyond the Hollywood hunk bubble for years. The effort materialized in fits and starts—the nature of the business—and has been largely facilitated by the small screen. In 2019, James starred in and executive-produced an acclaimed take on Jane Austen’s unfinished romantic manuscript, Sanditon, starring as the fiery male lead Sidney Parker (at least, in the first season—James departed after the series was renewed, telling me that “ending in a way which was uncomfortable and unsatisfactory felt very right for him as a character”).

He then moved to The Time Traveler’s Wife, the rare HBO drama to be savaged by critics and fail to score a second season. The melodramatic adaptation, which costarred Game of Thrones alum Rose Leslie, intrigued James for the simple challenge of playing a character from “very young to pretty old,” and found opportunities within that for a juicy challenge. The negative reception surprised him. “It was disappointing in many ways,” he says. “I thought the show definitely wasn’t perfect, but that there were some interesting through lines there for a story.”

I ask if, unlike with Sanditon, this was a case where he would’ve jumped at the chance to do another season. “You learn to forget pretty quickly,” he replies flatly. “You numb yourself, or at least train yourself to forget, pretty quickly, because it’s problematic to not do that.”

That tide may be finally turning. The sheer size of his White Lotus performance, salacious takeaways and headlines aside, leaves a lasting impression on both the viewer and, maybe, the actor himself. A hard one to shake off, you could say. On set some takes could run nearly 10 minutes long as James experimented before the camera with Plaza, Meghann Fahy (who plays Cameron’s wife, Daphne), and the rest of the cast. He got to be funny, which Hollywood hasn’t allowed for quite some time, even though James started out doing Edinburgh Fringe Festival comedy. He’s only seen three episodes as we chat, and is marveling at the bolder acting choices that have made it into White’s final cut. Again, there’s some acquired wisdom there: “You feel a freedom to take big stabs, and if it doesn’t land, it doesn’t land—but you see that the good stuff can land.”

James is now two weeks into filming The Gentlemen, producing and playing the lead in the new take on Guy Richie’s 2019 hit, reimagined as a Netflix series. This version centers on a soldier who returns home following the death of his father, and becomes part of a kind of landed gentry with his inheritance—albeit with a criminal empire bubbling underneath. James describes the show as a comedy and an action thriller and a social drama rolled into one—a messy, vibrant coalescence of everything the actor has been bringing to the table of late.

Is he nervous, then, about how it will be received—either another step forward, or another setback? Certainly he knows that back-and-forth all too well. James responds simply, and like a true industry veteran: “No, no, definitely not. I mean, if you did that, you’d be fucked.”

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David Canfield

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November 29, 2022