Hollywood is eying a reboot of The Maze Runner movies

Remember that stretch of time in the 2010s when every movie that wasn't about superheroes was about teenagers trying to fight their way out of a dystopian nightmare? The Hunger Games. Divergent. The Maze Runner. Well, that trend may be coming back. Not only did we get a Hunger Games prequel movie in the form of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but The A.V. Club reports that Universal is readying a reboot of The Maze Runner movies. Who do you turn to when society has scabbed over into an inequitable hellscape? Teens get it done.

The Maze Runner books by James Dashner are about a group of teens who are dumped into a mysterious maze. They have no memories, but they know they need to find their way out. In the long run, the maze ends up being a way for the tyrannical dystopian organization de jour to test these plucky youths as part of a convoluted plan to fight back against a disease that has devastated the planet. The dystopian organization is called WICKED. Subtlety is overrated anyway.

The books are filled with the kind of sci-fi terminology all these series used. In The Maze Runner, we have Grievers, Gladers, Immunes, Runners, Cranks and more. The main book trilogy was adapted as a series of three movies between 2014 and 2018: The Maze Runner, The Scotch Trials and The Death Cure. That final movie came out kind of late in the life cycle of the YA dystopia trend, but maybe a reboot could start a new cycle. And all of The Maze Runner movies made money, in part because director Wes Ball and company kept the budget lower than you'd expect for this kind of special effects-heavy series.

Ball, who is directing the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes as well as a Legend of Zelda movie, directed all three of the original Maze Runner movies. He'll remain a producer on the remake, and Jack Paglen will write the screenplay. We don't have a release date, nor do we even know if this is technically a retelling or a sequel. Everything new will be new again soon enough.

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