With the barrage of young adult movies out there vying for franchise recognition – Divergent, Percy Jackson, The Mortal Instruments, and Beautiful Creatures, to name a few – few expected 20th Century Fox’s The Maze Runner to be anything more than another blip on the radar. However, after coming in at number one at this weekend’s box office, hauling in around 32 million, it looks like we will be seeing the rest of James Dashner’s book trilogy play out on the big screen.
Which is to say, Fox announced yesterday that the series’ second installment – The Scorch Trials – will hit theaters on September 18th of next year. It looks like the studio had faith in the modestly-budgeted “little-YA-adaptation-that-could”: pre-production for the sequel is already underway, as indicated by the concept art that director Wes Ball exhibited at this year’s Comic-Con. The Scorch Trials script has also been in-the-works for a little over a year now.
We have yet to see if The Maze Runner will have strong word-of-mouth or box office staying power, but it is certainly off to a strong start.
