Insurgent Blu-ray exclusive: Veronica Roth on the sims scene

When Veronica Roth wrote her Divergent series, she couldn’t have known that one day a director would have $110 million to bring the novels to life. So action scenes from the books — constrained only by the limits of her and her readers’ imaginations — were amplified thanks to Hollywood magic and a 75-foot IMAX screen.

In Insurgent, the second film in the quartet of Divergent Series films, young heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley) is subjected to a series of simulation tests to see if she is the one pure Divergent that can open a sealed box of ancient secrets.

The film arrives on Digital HD on July 21 (with Blu-ray and DVD to follow on Aug. 4), and in an exclusive clip from a behind-the-scenes featurette, Roth talks about how the simulation scenes opened her eyes to storytelling possibility and the power of cinema.

“In the movie, you can show [the series of simulations] in such great detail, and they can become so much bigger, and so much cooler, and so much stranger than you ever imagined,” she says. “So for me, that’s been the best part of seeing this movie get filmed, is just how huge and crazy the world has become.”

The franchise isn’t slowing down. The first two films didn’t make Hunger Games money, perhaps, but each cleared almost $300 million around the world. The third book, Allegiant, is being split into two films, and the first arrives March 18.

DIGITAL HD/3-D BLU-RAY COMBO PACK/BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• Audio Commentary with Producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher
• “Insurgent Unlocked: The Ultimate Behind-the-Scenes Access” Feature-Length Documentary
• “Diverging: Adapting Insurgent to the Screen” Featurette
• “From Divergent to Insurgent” Featurette
• “The Others: Cast and Characters” Featurette
• “The Train Fight Unlocked” Featurette
• “The Peter Hayes Story” Featurette
• Marketing Gallery

•Insurgent: EW review

•Insurgent amps up the action