With the success of the first film based on James Dashner’s book series, 20th Century Fox have long since set the machine in motion for The Maze Runner to become a franchise. The sequel,** Scorch Trials**, is set for release later this year and now the studio has set the films’ writer, T.S. Nowlin, to adapt the third of Dashner’s tomes, **The Death Cure.
The first movie found Dylan O’Brien as Thomas, who wakes up in a mysterious elevator transporting him into a massive maze filled with other boys. With no memory of who he is, and plagued by strange dreams about a mysterious organisation known as WICKED, he soon discovers that something is very, very wrong.
Only by piecing together fragments of his past with clues he discovers in the maze can Thomas hope to uncover his true purpose and a means of escape. But with the obstacles ever changing and a surprise twist in the arrival of a young woman (Kaya Scodelario), it won’t be an easy task.
Before we discuss the following books, we have to offer a spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t read the books (or cheated and peeked ahead on Wikipedia). As for the second, it’s set in the ruined wasteland outside the maze and beyond as Thomas, after discovering that his captivity was part of an experiment to cure a terrible sickness from solar flares, and that people known as Cranks are the enemy. In The Death Cure, some of his memory starts to return, and begins to realise that the people behind WICKED really are not to be trusted.
Nowlin co-wrote The Maze Runner’s script with Noah Oppenheim and Grant Pierce Myers and was the lone scribe on the sequel. He’ll also tackle The Death Cure alone, while we wonder whether the studio will also consider Dashner’s latest, The Kill Order, a prequel, as something to work on once the trilogy is complete.
The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, once again directed by Wes Ball, will be out here on September 18.