The Maze Runner is back at the starting line.
20th Century Studios is rebooting the sci-fi action adventure franchise, which ran as a trilogy from 2014 to 2018.
The Disney arm is in negotiations to tap Jack Paglen, perhaps best known for writing the Johnny Depp-starring sci-fi movie Transcendence, to pen the script for a new installment.
Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Lee Stollman of Gotham Group and Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill, who produced the original trilogy, are back to produce this one. Wes Ball, who directed the original trilogy, will also be involved as a producer.
Based on the best-selling books by James Dashner, the first Maze Runner tome, and the movie adaptation, centered on a group of teens who find themselves arriving in a walled setting named the Glade with their memories wiped out. Beyond the four walls of the encampment lies a maze, filled with deadly mechanical creatures and doors that shut every night at sundown. One new arrival figures out the key to the groups’ survival and attempts to lead them out.
The subsequent movies and books opened up the setting, revealing a dystopian world with evil government organizations and foul corporations. The movies became larger in scope and more action-oriented.
According to sources, the reboot is not a redo of the story nor is it a direct sequel to the original trilogy, which starred Dylan O’Brien and Kaya Scodelario. The hope is to make a sort of continuation of the story yet also return to the elements that made the first movie connect with its audience. (The original movie, made by 20th Century Fox in the years leading up to its acquisition by Disney, also proved to be an unexpected moneymaker, generating $348 million worldwide but costing only $35 million to make.)
It is a similar strategy that 20th Century is employing with the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which just happens to be directed by Ball. Kingdom is a reboot of the Apes franchise that does not remake the movies from the 2010s (or the original one from the 1960s and 1970s) but connects by having a story with new characters set generations after the events of the previous film.
As a writer, Paglen also worked on Alien: Covenant, the 2017 sci-fi monster movie directed by Ridley Scott, and was a co-producer on Magic Order, Netflix’s series adaptation of the comic by Mark Millar.
He is repped by CAA and Lichter Grossman.
