Pop Goes The News — Production of The Maze Runner: The Death Cure will begin early next year in Vancouver.

The movie is based on the third book in the dystopian trilogy by James Dashner and follows 2014’s The Maze Runner and this year’s The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

Like the first two movies, it will be directed by Wes Ball.

“It’s gonna be a different kind of an engine, a different kind of genre almost and a different sort of colour palette and terrain,” Ball told Collider.

Ball said Death Cure will jump ahead about a year from Scorch Trials.

The first movie in the franchise was shot in Louisiana and the follow-up was made in New Mexico.

Death Cure will be shot at various locations in B.C. and based out of Vancouver Film Studios. Cameras are set to roll from Feb. 29 to May 31.

The movie is due in cinemas in February 2017.

To date, the franchise has grossed more than $658 million U.S. at the box office worldwide.

Death Cure is only one of several big-budget projects to shoot in B.C. early next year.

War of the Planet of the Apes, currently shooting, is scheduled to wrap in early March.

The new Power Rangers movie will be made in Vancouver from Jan. 18 until the end of March and the Ice Age survival flick The Solutrean is scheduled to be shot there from Feb. 22 to May 6.