Maze Runner, Fox's dystopian blockbuster, is leaving its rivals in the dust. Not so surprisingly, this young adult book-to-movie adaptation had an opening weekend that garnered $24 million in the United States. It dominated Friday with a forecast of $9 million to $10 million at 3,604 locations, including $1.1 million from the later screenings on Thursday.
"Maze Runner" is a futuristic saga that was expected by Fox to launch a $20 million range during the weekend. Instead, it would seem that "Maze Runner" has come in the close vicinity of last weekend's movie spear-header, "No Good Deed" from Sony, which, in turn, opened at $24.5 million.
Fox had selected a group of fine young actors, led by Dylan O'Brien from "Teen Wolf," on an active promo campaign for the blockbuster "Maze Runner." With some of today's rising stars, the movie was able to tap into the fickle young adult audience of today, the type of audience that was able to turn "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" into very successful and highly lucrative movie franchises.
"Maze Runner" is actually based on a young adult novel that was written by James Dashner. It featured a group of teens, predominantly male, who were stuck in a massive maze and chased by monsters. It was given a decent critical reception with a 63% "fresh" rating from the trusted aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes.
Moreover, "Maze Runner" earned nearly double the opening day of Liam Neeson's "Walk Among the Tombstones," a crime thriller from Universal. It showed moderate life for a movie with $5.8 million at 2,712 locations. It got a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is expected by critics to finish the frame with earnings between $15 million to $17 million.
However, since "Walk Among the Tombstones" will be excluding today's younger movie-goers because of its R-rating, many are expecting "Maze Runner" to breeze by the Neeson's film.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
