The Maze Runner will make its way to the big screens again with 20th Century Studios set to reboot the sci-fi adventure franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive report.
The studio, a division of Disney, is currently negotiating to hire Jack Paglen, best known for writing Transcendence, the Johnny Depp sci-fi film, to write the script for the series.
The Maze Runner comes back to life
Gotham Group's Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Lee Stollman and Temple Hill's Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, who were the original producers of the trilogy, will be back to produce this installment as well. The original series' director West Ball will also serve as a producer.
The Maze Runner series of movies were released in 2014, 2015 (The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials) and 2018 (The Maze Runner: The Death Cure). They were based on James Dashner's best-selling books. The story follows a group of teenagers who arrived in a walled location called the Glades. Their memories have also been wiped.
Beyond the encampment is a maze filled with mechanical creatures and doors that are sealed shut at sundown. A new arrival deciphers the key to their survival and tries to lead them out of the maze. As the books and the movies progress, it reveals a dystopian world ruled by corrupt governments and organizations.
THR's sources say that the reboot will not redo the story or a direct sequel to the film trilogy, which starred Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Ki Hong Lee. The reboot hopes to continue the story as well as connect to the details that made the first film a hit with the audience. The first movie, produced by 20th Century Fox before it was acquired by Disney, was an unexpected hit which earned $348 million globally on a $35 million budget.
Wes Ball adaptations and reboots
20th Century is using a similar strategy with the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, also directed by Ball. Kingdom is a reboot of the Apes movie franchise. It does not remake the films from the 2010s nor the previous ones released in the 1960s and 1960s. However, it does connect to the original albeit with new characters from the generations after the events of the films that came before.
No announcement has been made regarding the casting.
Paglen's writing credits include the 2017 Ridley Scott sci-fi monster movie Alien Covenant. He was also a co-producer on the Netflix animated series The Magic Order, based on Mark Millar's comic of the same name. Millar describes the project as a cross between The Sopranos and Harry Potter, “a magical fantasy-crime thing.”
Dashnet's The Maze Runner book series currently has several books. The first three, which were adapted into the original movies, make up the main series, with the first book published in 2009. The subsequent two books were prequels: The Kill Order and The Fever Code. There are also two companion books: The Maze Runner Files and the novella Crank Palace. A spin-off series, set 73 years after The Death Cure, started with The Maze Cutter. Its newest installment, The Godhead Complex, was released late last year.
Aside from the upcoming movie Kingdom, Ball also has Mouse Guard in production, a live-action adaptation of David Petersen's graphic novel. The filmmaker is also developing another live-action adaptation, this time based on the best-selling video game, The Legend of Zelda.
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