Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

After a slow start, September 2015 is shaping up to be a pretty solid month for the box office. After last week’s solid numbers, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and Black Mass picked up the baton and ran with it, leading another strong weekend.

First of all, can we take a moment to appreciate the way Aidan Gillen says “the scorch” in this new trailer for Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials? Now that we got that out of the way, the latest trailer for the upcoming YA sequel is better than the first, teasing out a sinister new threat known as “cranks,” and not the Jason Statham kind, unfortunately.

The Maze Runner was a surprisingly entertaining little movie that probably never needed a sequel. But, this is a post-Harry Potter and -Hunger Games era and everything needs to be a trilogy. Much of this was pre-determined before the original film hit theaters, as the books were written as a trilogy and Fox picked them up, hoping they’d have their own teen-oriented, dystopian future movie. And, now they do. Today, we have our first look at the Maze Runner sequel, The Scorch Trials, which looks like it’s missing almost all the charm of the original film.

The Maze Runner was a surprisingly entertaining movie, even at a time when dystopian young adult adaptations are already feeling stale. There was a lot of inherent mystery built up around the film's central conceit — what the heck is this maze, who built it and can our heroes solve it? — and that was great. But, how will a Maze Runner film work when (spoiler alert) there's no maze? Enter: The Scorch Trials.

Fox was so confident that 'The Maze Runner' would be a success that, earlier on, it greenlit it's sequel, 'The Scorch Trials,' based on James Dashner's second installment in his dystopian novel series. Following the film's box office success this opening weekend, though, the studio wants a quicker turnaround and has now slated the sequel for release in 2015, while revealing a first look at what's to come.

Keeping in mind that 'The Maze Runner' (Wes Ball's adaptation of James Dashner's young-adult sci-fi novel) doesn't even hit theaters until September of next year, 20th Century Fox is already looking to bring the second book in the four-part series, 'The Scorch Trials,' to the big screen. It's probably running after 'The Hunger Games'' box office gold.