Reason Why Joel Edgerton’s Dark Matter is a TV Show, Not a Movie, is Exactly What Could Have Saved Shailene Woodley’s Divergent Franchise
Australian actor Joel Edgerton has been in the entertainment industry for nearly three decades. He kickstarted his career with roles in movies like Ned Kelly and played the role of a young Owen Lars in the Star Wars films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Fans of the franchise will know that he reprised the role for the recently-released Disney+ show Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Edgerton’s most recent venture is the sci-fi series Dark Matter. The producer of the show Matt Tolmach recently revealed that the original plan was to make a movie, but then decided against it in favor of a more elaborate project. He also shed light on the reason they decided to make a series.
Matt Tolmach on Why Joel Edgerton’s Dark Matter is A Series
The creator of Dark Matter is Blake Crouch, who has adapted the series from his 2016 eponymous book. The show follows Jason Dessen, a physicist from Chicago, who is stuck in an alternate version of his life and tries to get back to his original life while preventing the alternate version of himself from harming his family.
In December 2020, Deadline announced the show to be in production with Crouch set to write and act as a showrunner on it. However, Tolmach, who has worked on great projects like The Amazing Spider-Man, claimed that adapting the book into a show was not always the plan as he wanted it to be on the big screens.
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In an interview with ComicBook, Tolmach reflected on why they decided against it eventually.
“I think in that parallel universe where we made that, it would have been a really good movie, but we wouldn’t have explored Jason-2 on the level that we did, we wouldn’t have explored Amanda on the level that we did.”
He further explained the decision, saying:
“Particularly with the overall arc of it, the longing that Jason-1 has to return to his world and his family — you have to feel that in a very profound way to kind of earn the journey, and to feel the hopelessness that he faces along the way and the joy…so in order to really invest, you need to spend time there.”
The Venom: Let There Be Carnage producer said that when he started working on the project, it did not take him long to realize that a show adaptation would be better suited for the book.
Divergent Series Could Be Saved If Creators Had Thought to Make It Like Dark Matter
It is no secret that Shailene Woodley‘s Divergent movie series was now well-received upon its release. The movies were expected to be as successful as the Hunger Games movies but failed to attain the same level of popularity.
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One of the most prominent reasons behind this poor performance of the movie adaptation series of Veronica Roth’s novel trilogy was the character development. Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley), Tobias Eaton (Theo James), and Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet) went through major development throughout the series, and showcasing this in the movies would have served well.
The plot pacing was another element that harmed the success of the movies. So, if the creators had chosen to make it into a TV series rather than a movie series like Dark Matter, there would be chances of better performance as it would give them more space and time to tell the story better and explore the characters more elaborately.
The first two episodes of Dark Matter are available for streaming on Apple TV+. Divergent movie series is available for streaming on Prime Video.
