Twentieth Century Fox has announced a February 17, 2017 release date for the final installment of their big screen adaptation of The Maze Runner YA novel series, The Death Cure. In a move that breaks with the current vogue in Hollywood for these types of films, the adaptation of the last book will not be spread out across two films in a cynical attempt to wring some more money out of the franchise.
Last fall’s release of the first film in the trilogy, The Maze Runner, was a bit of a sleeper hit. It earned ten times its $34 million budget at the international box office, with more than 2/3rds of that amount coming from overseas. The film centered on a group of amnesiac teens trapped in a woodland area surrounded my insurmountable walls. Each day, a door opens in one wall to reveal a maze that may lead to the outside and freedom. However, it seems to take more than one day to find one’s way through, the complex passages change every evening and no one has spent the night inside the maze and lived. The second film, The Scorch Trials, picks up the story after a group manages to navigate the maze’s dangers and make it to the outside world. It hits theaters September 18.
