Wyck Godfrey talks with Collider

Collider talks with producer Wyck Godfrey on set of The Maze Runner.

Here are the highlights:

On the lack of telepathy: 

Really, I’d say that’s the biggest change from the book. We talked to James Dashner about it early on – in that in the book, Teresa and Thomas are all of a sudden hearing each-other’s thoughts. Which, on top of everything else that has happened in the book at that point was like another kind of like ‘Whoa, what is this place?’ It’s not something very visual, that you can see. It’s not something that Wes really loved from the book. So, we’re setting it up so we can carry it on in the second book when it becomes a more prominent feature. We’ve got some visual things we’re doing where those who have read the book and love the book can go ‘Oh, there’s some connection happening.’ We’re just not going to show that. We have so many things in this movie that we have to acclimate the audience to, which is the fact of the existence of the Glade. What is it? Who put us here? Who are we? You know, the idea that they don’t have any memories. They don’t have any understanding of what’s outside the maze. You’ve got the solving of the puzzle of the maze. The grievers, which are this creature that we’ve never seen before. When Teresa comes up  it’s already a mystery because she reveals that she is the last one ever. You know, she says ‘Everything is about to change.’ To add the telepathy on top of that seemed just like one too many things to handle in the 90 minutes we have, or two hours we have to make this movie.  

On minimizing Teresa's coma:

She actually is out when she comes up. She has this brief thing like she does in the book where she pops up and says one thing and then goes back. She’s out for a little bit, and then they go on about their way and there are a few more scenes. Then, when Minho and Thomas are in the map room, all of a sudden the medjacks come in and one of them’s got the knock, the same thing in the book, the knock on the head. Minho and Thomas are like, ‘What is it?’  They’re like, ‘The girl!’ We did something fun in the movie that James didn’t have in the book, we have this huge lookout tree that I think you guys saw. We decided to have the first thing she did when she wakes up, she doesn’t know anything and she’s surrounded by these boys, she bolts and sees this tree and goes up it. It’s like they freed a fox. She’s basically pelting them! She’s throwing stuff at them, and Thomas goes up and has his scene with her. So, that part’s still fairly similar to the book.  

On the ending of the film:

I think it can stand alone, I mean honestly I hope it can. I also hope people think it’s a cliffhanger. The reality is that the central question of the movie is “Who are we and how do we get out? What’s out there?” We answer those questions, we get them out of the maze. There are characters that are lost along the way,  and there’s a mystery of what’s out there at the end of the movie. You do come out of it going, ‘Whoa, what happened to the world?’  You don’t answer that question. You just know that the world is different, and changed. So, that will be the journey of the second film. 

On what makes the series intriguing to him:

To me it’s the thematic stuff that gets me. You know, that sense that adults have fucked up the world and they are constantly treating you as a kid, what you can and can’t do and putting constraints around you. They don’t realize that at the time that they’re doing that to prepare you for the adult world, which is difficult. I just think this series of books really captures that core emotion of ‘I want to figure it out on my own, I don’t want to do exactly what I’m told, but I am passing these kind of obstacles and learning about myself and the world in a more sophisticated way.’ 

Be sure to check out the rest of this great interview at the source!

Collider Visits the TMR Set

During filming Collider visited the set and sat down with Dylan, Kaya, and Wes to talk all things The Maze Runner.

Here are the highlights:

Dylan on being cast as Thomas:

Just like anything, I just auditioned for it. It’s funny. The way Wes told me it happened was, at first, I went in on it initially with the casting director, just like everybody. I didn’t hear back for like a month and a half, because Wes was like, “His hair is too MTV!” That’s what he thought, which was so funny. Then he saw a picture of me with more regular hair, the buzzcut or something from Teen Wolf, and he brought me back and it worked. It just ended up working out.

Dylan on potentially sacrificing himself for others:

When you think about it, I think it gets in your way, in your head about it. But instinctively, I’m always one who will lash out at anyone hurts my friends, viciously, kind of. Like, murder. [Laughs] No, but I’m very protective of the people I love. Sacrificing is a whole other thing. I don’t think you often come to that situation in life. But it’s a primal instinct, but maybe. Put me in that situation and we’ll find out!

Dylan on leading man pressure:

Yeah, yeah, there’s always pressure. Not pressure per say, I guess. You’re always conscious of what you’re doing. I don’t feel like I have to be the leader here or anything, I don’t have to take the reins. I think we have such an awesome group of actors so I don’t necessarily feel that way. But I can sometimes get into the head space of self-doubt. It’s just a human trying to act, essentially, but sometimes it can be a lot. But at the end of the day, I’m in love with what we’re doing. I’m in love with the movie that we’re making and the people we’re doing it with. Wes, my bosses and this whole group. I’m just trying to focus on the experience and what we’re doing with it. I think you yield the best result with that mentality, I think.

Dylan on his running skills: 

You see, that’s funny. You’d think they’d have to. He’s a Maze Runner! But sometimes with casting, I think about this sometimes. I never ran for them or anything. I just happen to be able to run really fast. I hate running, though. I love this running—long-distance, get out of here—but I’d be down to do a sprint any day, then wake up the next day and not be able to move. I love sprinting, which is such a weird sentence. [Laughs] But no, they never tested my running ability. I didn’t have much time to physically prepare at all. I do work every night on Teen Wolf, so to get up on your feet every day … I’m not in bad shape, but I’m not in great shape. I’m not somebody who works out every day, who goes to the gym ever. But it works with the character. I’m not supposed to be ripped. It’s about the heart that’s put into everything. When my character runs, he doesn’t even know he’s running. He’s just doing it. It’s instinct. It all plays well into the story.

Kaya on her first experience on a big budget set:
I tried to go into it treating it like any other job which I think is what you have to do. I’m really lucky it’s a big Hollywood film and everyone really cares about it. Everyone wants it to be made because they want it to be a good story. They’ve put a lot of time and effort into it. It doesn’t feel as though it’s just here for the sake of doing another young adult film.  If you speak to Wes, he really gives a fu*k about it!  And when you have that passion and when you have that dedication, it’s the same as being as being on the low budget set ever. It’s just that there’s loads of free food which is great!


Kaya on the most challenging part of playing Teresa:
Probably the physical side. I had never done an action film where I’ve had to run around, especially running after Dylan where he’s all athletic and American and great at sport. And I smoke and drink, typically English, so for me I’ve been pushing myself to get into shape and actually exercise and try to keep up with them all. It’s been a great challenge for me. I’ve been able to stand my ground. I didn’t want to be the pansy female, I wanted to give them a run for my money and I feel like I have! 


Kaya on what she's most looking forward to filming:
I can’t wait to do all the Griever stuff when we’re being attacked, because I’ve never worked with CGI or special effects so I’m really interested to see how that’s done.  And to kind of push myself to be afraid of a guy in a lycra green suit, that’s what I’m looking forward to. And the Maze stuff, because it all fascinates me how big this whole thing is and that there are three cameras. It’s still really exciting to me, so I can’t wait to see how the big stuff is filmed.


Wes on record amount of daily setups:
Yeah, well as it is my first movie and stuff, our first day we got 36 setups or something like that, which is supposed to be a lot. One day we actually got rained out for half the day and so we lost half of our day. We had six hours and we got thirty-nine setups on that day. That was a crazy, crazy day. That was nuts. That was our Ben banishment scene, which is going to be freaking intense. It’s going to be really brutal and it’s a scene that almost all the fans… When I first started this movie, I tweeted all the fans and said “Hey guys, what are your favorite scenes from the book?” I made sure all of those scenes are in this movie and Ben’s banishment was one of them and that was one of those days where we were just knocking stuff off and personally for me I love when we get into that stuff. We storyboard a lot, but I love when we are just going in there and just almost on the fly making stuff and discovering moments. It’s just fantastic, where you can really go in there and be creative and everything.


Wes on camera setups and blocking out scenes:
You have your master, you go in and get that and say “That’s great. Come in here, get this shot. Go over here and get this shot.” As we blocked the scene, we’d go in and rehearse it, block it, start getting the lights ready, and then we’d start talking about where we were going to get our shots and our little angles and all of this great stuff and then at the same time sometimes we are running three cameras at the same time. Well today we’re doing two. Well, actually we have three in there, but three cameras all of the time doesn’t help us so much. You start getting on top of each other, so I find two cameras is awesome, because we can get there and just fish for awesome moments, then occasionally have that third camera coming in for the big crane wides and stuff like that.

Please check out the rest of Collider's interview with Dylan here, Kaya, and Wes! Be sure to catch Collider's 45 Things to Know about TMR from their set visit here!

Dylan mentions TMR with Collider

While promoting Teen Wolf, Dylan mentions The Maze Runner, it's pushed released date, and more. 

Here are the highlights:

Have you gotten to see The Maze Runner yet?

No.  I’ve gotten to do some ADR, though, so I’ve gotten to see some.  It looks beautiful.  I hope that people like it.  I really think it looks great, so far.  I haven’t seen how the movie came out, but the cinematography looked fucking great when I saw it.  I was very happy to see that.  I just implicitly trust that director, Wes Ball.  I absolutely fell in love with that guy, within a week of shooting.  He is one of my favorite people.  I would do any movie of his, ever.  He’s just got such a great energy.  He’s so confidence without ever being cocky.  He’s the most likeable, regular dude, who happens to also be a genius, and have a really good feel for film and storytelling.  He’s great, and so were the producers and cast.  It was so our thing, and we loved it so much.  We hope people like it because we had so much fun doing it.  The whole cast is in love with the story.  I’m in love with the story and characters.  We were all really close on the shoot, and we had a great little family.  I really hope it does well, just because we all want to go back and do it again, so badly. 

After the release date got pushed, were you relieved to learn that they picked up the option on the second book?

Totally.  And the news that it got pushed is good news, even without the option on the second book.  It only means that they’re not trying to spit it out.  They’re giving Wes more time to get the cut that he wants.  It just means that they’re liking what they see, so they’re investing more into it. 

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview at Collider!

Comic Con 2013 Masterpost

Dylan O'Brien, producer Wyck Godfrey, director Wes Ball, and author James Dashner stopped by Nerd HQ to promote The Maze Runner.

Panel

Pictures

Via The Maze Runner Facebook

Credits to Dylan O'Brien Daily

Video

Collider interview with Wyck Godfrey

What's the Easter egg franchise potential like for The Maze Runner?

I think the entire mystery of what WCKD is and who they are and what their plan for these boys is, is the thing that drives you into the second book. And you find out, with the way Wes has handled it, was you do discover what's out there, but you don't know everything. You realize very quickly that they've made it out of the maze, but it's just the beginning. It's just the beginning of what they'll have to face, so by the end of the movie, you're satisfied with these having survived the maze trials, but you're dying to know what's going to happen next and I think that's important to get people intense. And the most important thing, frankly, is giving an audience with characters they care about. Essentially the drama of these books is the relationships that are formed and not everyone's going to survive. And you're heart's broken when people die, but if you get the audience caring about Thomas and Minho and Chuck and Newt, they're going to be with you in the second book/movie.

Source

Cinema.de Interview with Dylan

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Collider with Dylan O'Brien

On set life:

Yeah, as an actor, it’s interesting because so much was like what you’re focused on and a lot of what you need to focus on is story and your scenes, and telling this story in each scene, and literally being on it constantly while also balancing other things.  In this case, it was a lot of other things.  There was a lot of physical stuff I needed to do for the role as far as — I didn’t need to train or anything for it.  But just as far as daily throwing myself into something or onto something or off of something, or running, hightailing it all day long for a hundred yard dashes.  By the end of the first week, my arms were covered in these cuts and then makeup started kind of duplicating the cuts.  The rest of the shoot when they went away, I would still have the scar of it, like the faint little line because we’re out on the sun all day too.  Then it became my cuts they were actually kind of reviving every day for the movie.  It’s just so funny, I’ve never done anything that physical, I’ve never worked the hours that I’ve worked in this movie, and I’ve never also shot this big of a film.  So, it was a really interesting kind of combination of craziness. 

Surprises for book fans:

 I think everything.  I can’t say how the movie’s going to come out or anything but I think [director] Wes [Ball] is going to kill it.  It’s really gritty, it’s a lot grittier than I think people are going to expect it to be.  What’s funny is that, in terms of subject matter, something like The Hunger Games is much more viciously violent than this story is but when you see the movies though, it’s interesting how — I think this is going to surprise people with how dirty and dark it is.

Check out the rest of this fantastic interview at the source!

Hypable with James Dashner 

On seeing his characters come to life:

There’s so much relief with it. I don’t know how I would have reacted if I have disagreed with all the choices, or if they were butchering my book or my vision. I agree and support everything about this film. I love the casting, I love the script, I love Wes’ vision for it. The tone and the spirit of the movie, it’s almost too good to be true. I am extremely satisfied and happy about it.

On adaptation changes:

There are changes, and they all make sense. I will spend the next seven months soothing my fans, preparing them. For example, the telepathy between Thomas and Teresa would just not work in the movie. Telepathy never works, it just looks cheesy and stupid. It works great in the book, it’s a cool way for them to be connected, but that is not in the film. But Wes Ball is a genius, and the way he creates that connection in a different way is very cool. And small things, like WICKED is just WCKD, and of course there are a lot of fans that went nuts. But it means the exact same thing, it’s pronounced the exact same way, it just looks cooler visually than spelling out the word.

Be sure to check out both Part One and Part Two of this in-depth interview with James!

Teen.com talks with Dylan O'Brien

On the importance of reading the book:

It was important for me but once I got halfway through I realized that it wasn’t too crucial at that point. Because again, I had no time, I came right into pre-production and we were starting in a week and a half. We had already had changes made to our script at that time so I was still getting the script down. We have so many changes from the book to the script that at one point I was starting to get confused. I remember one day I went up to Wes and asked him about a scene we were doing and he was like “that’s not in the script, it’s only in the book” and I was like ‘Oh my God I gotta work this out!’ So I put the book the book aside for a second, I didn’t want to finish it until I was confident I knew the script inside out. That was my priority as an actor, but the book helps so much just briefing me on what I’m doing. I love books too because books in general give so much more insight to characters and people. So it’s really important to get that insight as you are portraying the character.

Three words to describe working with Kaya:

Never-boring, adorable, lovely.

Check out the rest of the interview over at Teen.com

Dylan O'Brien talks with Collider

While promoting The Internship, leading man Dylan O'Brien talks with Steve Weintraub of Collider.com about The Maze Runner. 

Starts around 4:10.

What got you to sign onto this big project?

Getting to do anything like this, for me, is really cool. Even just getting the chance for audition for it, go out for it, is awesome. And, for me, the reason I'm so excited about it is, because I think it can be really something original within the whole dystopian--post-apocalyptic universe. I think it's a really cool take on that and something that hasn't really been done. It does get compared to The Hunger Games a lot and that's an amazing thing, but it's a different thing. It's a different world. I think it's cool. I just genuinely think it's really, really cool. I think it can succeed on a lot of levels with a lot of different people. And the fans of the book are so excited and so into it that they've gotten me really into it. I'm reading the book right now and it's awesome. It's just like a cool world. It's unique. It's a little like Lord of the Flies, Lost Boys almost. It's edgy, but it's interesting, and you don't know--there's a huge picture. The first book only covers such a tiny little bit of it with the way to go with it in the other movies and books. You find out so much about what's really going on. I just think that's awesome.

Has he bought himself anything since he got the role?

Uhhh, the book!

Check out more at the source!