Comic-Con attendees get first look at ‘Divergent’

SAN DIEGO – Fans at Comic-Con on Thursday got the very first look at footage from the highly anticipated new film Divergent.

Director Neil Burger played the two-minute clip for about 7,000 attendees at the Summit Entertainment panel. He noted shooting wrapped just two days ago in Chicago “so it’s very fresh for all of us.”

The movie, based on the first novel of the same title in a trilogy by author Veronica Roth, follows 16-year-old Tris as she tries to choose what direction her life will take in a dystopian near future. Chicago is now a walled city, and the people who live there are grouped into five factions. Tris, played by Shailene Woodley, is vying to join the Gauntless, made up of the bravest members of this future society.

The film, to be released in March, is expected to tap into the same audience that clamoured for The Hunger Games.

Roth also told fans the final book in the series, Allegiant, will be narrated by both Tris and Four. It’s to be released later this year.

The clip showed Woodley jumping from a moving train on Chicago’s famed elevated transport system onto a roof, leaping several stories into a deep hole, crowd surfing in a cafeteria full of Gauntless members, facing down thrown knives and climbing a ferris wheel.

It also featured a few electric moments between Woodley and fellow star Theo James, who plays Four.

After asking James a question, panel host Chris Hardwick acknowledged the actor’s hunky status.

“Honestly, listening to your accent, half the crowd just got pregnant,” he joked.