Lace Back Up for The Maze Runner

Pretty good reviews and even better audience word-of-mouth shot The Maze Runner to the top of the weekend box office. Distributor 20th Century Fox has announced the next book in Dashner’s franchise, The Scorch Trials, will get big-screen treatment, too, with a planned September 2015 release date.

Were you one of the moviegoers who shelled out $32.5 million this weekend on The Maze Runner, the film adaptation of James Dashner’s 2009 young adult dystopia-thriller? I was. In a bit of biblio-blasphemy, I rather preferred the movie version to the book. The film preserved the best parts of the book – the catchy hook (Lord of the Flies meets Cabin in the Woods), the Skinner box-like steady injections of thrills – while also aging it up a bit from the book’s younger readership and redressing the book’s habit of telling, not showing.

We’ve bet you’ve got thoughts, too – about the book and the movie, the YA dystopia craze, how Maze Runner ranks alongside other franchises like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Pure trilogies, and much, much more – so do join us this evening from 7-8pm as our monthly Twitter book club, #ACreads, meets. Follow @AustinChronicle and use hashtag #ACreads to be a part of the conversation. All shanks welcome!