"The Maze Runner," the big screen adaptation of the popular post-apocalyptic young-adult novel, swept the box office over the weekend with a $32.5 million take, easily whipping action veteran Liam Neeson's latest flick, "A Walk Among the Tombstones."
Falling somewhere in between the big-budget "Hunger Games" franchise and the 2013 young-adult bomb "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones," "The Maze Runner" appears to have found its own niche among teenagers and
young people, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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CinemaScore polling of moviegoers graded "The Maze Runner" with an A-minus while Tina Fey's latest film, "This Is Where I Leave You," and "Tombstones" received a B-plus and B-minus, respectively. The Hollywood Reporter noted that that females made up 52 percent of "The Maze Runner's" audience, adding that nearly 65 percent of the viewers were 25 and under.
"It was a perfect storm," 20th Century Fox distribution head Christ Aronson told The Reporter. "We went after teenagers hard and did everything to eventize this film in a play period never tested before. We accomplished the task."
The studio was so sold on "The Maze Runner" that it's already begun pre-production for a sequel, "The Scorch Trials," which is
part of the book series, according to USA Today.
"The film benefited from a somewhat simple hook and lacked the complicated world-building that required an entire marketing
campaign to explain," Forbes magazine reported. "The film promised young boys stuck on a mysterious island, and a giant mechanical maze that contained scary creatures, and it delivered on both counts."
Forbes also praised the film for driving female viewership despite a mostly male ensemble cast.
"'The Maze Runner,' which is frankly a better movie than I expected (which arguably explains the surprisingly high 2.88x weekend multiplier), is a small-scale genre entry that is doing pretty terrific business in regards to its own budget and expectations," Forbes' Scott Mendelson wrote. "A sequel is already in preproduction, with release date of Sept. 18, 2015, just announced. That's convenient since the film's epilogue is the most unintentionally hilarious 'sequel bait' sequence since the original 'X-Men.'"
Here are the estimated Rentrak ticket sales in the United States and Canada for Friday through Sunday:
1. "The Maze Runner," $32.5 million ($37.6 million international).
2. "A Walk Among the Tombstones," $13.1 million ($5 million international).
3. "This Is Where I Leave You," $11.9 million.
4. "No Good Deed," $10.2 million.
5. "Dolphin Tale 2," $9 million ($1.2 million international).
6. "Guardians of the Galaxy," $5.2 million ($5.2 million international).
7. "Let's Be Cops," $2.7 million ($1.5 million international).
8. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," $2.7 million ($7.3 million international).
9. "The Drop," $2.1 million.
10. "If I Stay," $1.8 million ($3.2 million international).
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