Although the YA dystopian boom seems to have mostly faded away, the casting formula for those post-apocalyptic angst fests is still firmly intact: round up some young, attractively brooding teens (and post-teens) for your leads, and then spend the rest of the budget on adult performers who can carry the excess acting weight. Case in point: Deadline reports that the third Maze Runner film—which carries the wonderfully stupid name The Death Cure—has now added prestige-TV mainstay Walton Goggins to its roster of adult actors, which previously included Patricia Clarkson, Lili Taylor, and Game Of Thrones’ Aiden Gillen. (We can only hope Gillen and Goggin’s interactions won’t revive the bloody The Wire vs. The Shield debates of 2008.)
Goggins will play Lawrence, a revolutionary who captures Dylan O’Brien’s Thomas, forcing him to work with the enigmatic Right Arm. Besides injecting some wild-eyed Southern charm into the film’s proceedings, Goggins’ casting also allows us to indulge in our favorite guilty pleasure: Scanning through the Wikipedia pages for James Dashner’s Maze Runner books and searching for the least comprehensible sentence we can find. Today’s entry: “Gally also reveals the decaying cities are home to many who suffer from the Flare, but partake of a drug called the Bliss, which slows down brain functioning and can help cranks not feel pain from the Flare.” Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff right there. Meanwhile, The Death Cure is currently scheduled for a February 2018 release.