3/17/2014
First Trailer and Poster for 'The Maze Runner' Starring Dylan O'Brien
The YA landscape has been dominated by female leads, and thus so have the many film adaptations. While it's been good to see a lot of strong women characters, it's also made it difficult for any particular franchise to stand-out, which may explain why so many of these movies have failed. The Maze Runner offers something a little different in that it's largely centered on a group of males, but is that enough to separate it from the genre pack?
The trailer for the Wes Ball-directed adaptation has been released, along with the first poster. Set in (you guessed it) a dystopic future version of Earth, the story follows Thomas (Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien), a teenaged boy who wakes up in a community of young men known as The Glade. With no memory of his life on the outside, he comes to learn they are surrounded by a giant stone maze from which there is no escape. Everything changes when a girl, the first girl they've ever seen, arrives with an important message.
James Dashner wrote an entire trilogy of novels plus a prequel, all of which we'll see on the silver screen if this one does reasonably well. Also starring Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Patricia Clarkson, The Maze Runner opens September 19th. We'll update this post with the trailer later.