Wes Ball to direct 'The Maze Runner'

20th Century Fox is investing pretty heavily in the future of director, Wes Ball. His short film, Ruin, sparked an internet craze, and the studio picked up the rights to turn the animated post-apocalyptic story into a feature film. Now they're turning to Ball to helm an adaptation of the popular young adult novel, The Maze Runner.

James Dashner's novel takes place in a similar dystopian future as Ruin, and follows Thomas, a young man who wakes up without any memories amongst a community of boys known as Gladers, who are all trapped in an enormous maze. He soon comes to realize that this was all part of his destiny to become a maze runner, and to lead the Gladers to freedom. Fox has been trying to put this film together for a couple of years now, with Catherine Hardwicke(Twilight) attached for awhile before dropping out. Noah Oppenheim penned the first draft of the script.

Fox clearly has aims on turning this into a potential franchise, as Dashner has already completed two sequels, and a prequel that was just released earlier this month. If The Maze Runner turns out to be the hit many think it can, especially in light of the similarly themed The Hunger Games, we may be seeing a lot of Wes Ball in the future. If you want to get a glimpse of what he can do, check out the Ruin short film below....