Page to Premiere has a great new interview with Dylan O’Brien, James Dashner, Wes Ball, and Wyck Godfrey all about what went into building the world of The Maze Runner movie!
How did you find the Glade?
Wes Ball: They took me out – the location guys. We found this perfect little square plot of land that was surrounded by trees – almost a perfect line – and the trees are up almost 80 feet tall. Then there’s this little bit of forest in there with hills and swamp and all that stuff, and there’s grass around the treeline. So you can go out to this place, the little area that we found, and imagine the tree line as the walls that surround the Glade and the forest that the boys kind of live in and create their own little village community in. We basically picked that area and then started building. We built all the structures, we built it all in place, so you could actually draw a real map of the real Glade and all these little paths that eventually got worn down as the construction guys kept going back and forth from place to place. It just became the Glade. It was fantastic.Wyck Godfrey: The cool part is that we did build the huge concrete doors, you know, the hydraulics of it. That had to really be interacted with; constantly, they’re looking through the doors. That was the biggest part of the build.
Wes Ball: And it was only 30 feet tall, so we’re gonna extend it in CG up to 100 and something feet. But for all the close-up stuff when, you know, we’ve got the big group around the doors, you see it; it’s real. It’s cool.
James Dashner: You guys could imagine how cool it was for me to visit and see my book come to life. They did a fantastic job with this.