DON’T BE LEFT BEHIND: “THE MAZE RUNNER” NOW IN CINEMAS

                Can W.C.K.D. be good? Find out in the thrilling and out-of-your-breath action adventure film “The Maze Runner” starring a group of amaze-ing young boys and a girl – headed by Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, Aml Ameen, Blake Cooper and Kaya Scodelario.

                Directed by Wes Ball, the movie opened in Philippine cinemas (last September 17) with fever-pitch anticipation from movie enthusiasts especially from the young adult crowd from whom the book has enjoyed immense success catapulting it to one of YA bestselling series of all time.

                In the movie, Thomas (O’Brien) wakes up trapped in a massive maze with a group of other boys, they call it the Glade, he has no memory of the outside world other than strange dreams about a mysterious organization known as W.C.K.D.  Within the glade stands a massive series of walls that forms a dangerous maze where their only hope to escape lies at the end of each cluster, but the walls change every single day, as such they assign runners, the fastest of the bunch to track and take mental notes of the maze’s secrets.

                “The Maze Runner” also brims with a cast full of talent within its action-packed and visually stunning production, director Ball and producer Wyck Godfrey assembled an impressive cast to form a highly functional society as they perform their daily jobs, look out for each other and engage in power struggles as they try to solve the mystery of the Maze. Godfrey says, “The casting was one of the most exciting things about the project.  The actors really believed in this world, and we went far afield to find them.”  

Thomas, played by Dylan O’Brien is the boy who takes that step forward when everybody else takes a step back.  He’s curious and comes to learn that he is just one of many who have come up on that elevator once a month over a three year period.

The leader of these Gladers is Alby, who’s the closest thing to a father figure.  “Alby is the main dude,” says Ball.  “He was the first Glader, the first boy sent up the elevator, and he had to survive an entire month by himself not knowing where he was and without any help.  Then the next guy showed up.  Alby figured out that order and discipline were necessary to survive in this world.  He’s very protective of it.”

Thomas’s nemesis in the Glade is Gally.  Smart and intimidating, Gally wants to maintain the status quo and clashes with the new arrival.  “But Gally and Thomas are really two sides of the same coin,” notes Ball.  “Thomas fully embraces and charges into the unknown and Gally is all about self-preservation and keeping things safe and normal.”

Alby’s lieutenant, Newt, is played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster (voice of Ferb in “Phineas and Ferb”), who appears in the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones” and first gained attention for his performance in “Love, Actually.”  Newt walks with a limp that’s not fully explained because it’s something he’d prefer not to talk about.  Nevertheless, Brodie-Sangster says the character is “the fun one of the group, the one that everyone gets along with.  The Gladers come to Newt with their problems because they like and trust him.”



British actress Kaya Scodelario plays the only young woman among the Gladers, Teresa, who has a mysterious connection with Thomas. Having made her name with the UK TV series Skins, Scodelario impressed the filmmakers by being “one of the guys,” as Godfrey puts it. “She’s badass, which is what you need to be if you’re going to be thrust into the world of the Glade with all these young men.”

The elite among the Gladers are called Runners, whose athleticism propels them through the Maze each day, which helps them compile a map of the foreboding structure and, maybe, figure out a way to escape.  Their captain is Minho, played by Ki Hong Lee.  The young actor grew to understand his position of leadership among the Gladers in a very individual way.  “I looked at the Marines and the Army and, and I consider Minho like a general of the Gladers,” Lee explains, “It’s his job to rally the troops.”

“The Maze Runner” is now playing in cinemas across the Phils. from 20th Century Fox distributed by Warner Bros.

“THE MAZE RUNNER” PICKS UP SPEED AS SEPTEMBER 17 NEARS!

Watch and Meet the Gladers Video

                “The Maze Runner” is set to turn things in a dizzying blur as the teenage captives in a virtual prison known as The Glade run for a chance to save their lives.   Headed by “Teen Wolf’s” heartthrob Dylan O’Brien along with a group of talented young actors including Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee and Blake Cooper,  “The Maze Runner” is directed by Wes Ball based on James Dashner’s hugely successful (trilogy) tome.

                At this year's Comic Con, the cast attests that the movie will be shocked on how the book’s famous baddies known as the Grievers, were depicted. Director Ball further stressed that the audience will definitely be in for a pretty terrifying ride.

Published in October 2009, “The Maze Runner” became a New York Times Best Seller and captured the imaginations of readers around the world, who described it as a combination of “Lord of the Flies,” “ The Hunger Games,” and the legendary television series “Lost.”  Dashner understands those comparisons, especially to Lord of the Flies, but notes that THE MAZE RUNNER is at its heart a very different story.  “I don’t think characters would react they way they do in Lord of the Flies,” he explains.  “I think they’d be more civilized, orderly, and determined to survive and escape.  THE MAZE RUNNER is an adventure story that’s also about hope and the potential of the human spirit.”

             
The book caught the attention of producers Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Lee Stollman from the management/production company The Gotham Group.  “We see a lot of young adult novels,” Stollman explains. “And you always look for something that has a big world creation with characters that are identifiable and something we haven’t seen before,” which is what they found in Dashner’s book.

                Leading man Dylan agrees, "That’s something that might separate this, I think, being like one of those YA movies that are coming out. I so genuinely don’t think it’s like that. It totally exists in its own right and like he said, it could easily be taken as a kid’s movie just objectively, but there is a real sense- there’s this gravitas to it It’s really, really mature in that aspect of performances and just the story."

                Reflecting on the story’s appeal, Dashner notes that much of it stems from the “constant state of not being able to predict what’s going to happen next.  I wanted my readers, and now the moviegoing audience, to feel like Thomas when they enter the Glade.”



                “The Maze Runner” opens September 17 from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Meet the Gladers video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFvok6gBAdM&list=PLcZs6n5iZPx8CHV6UBIQaEHvK4Uru0CqW

FLEEING FROM THE INESCAPABLE IN “THE MAZE RUNNER”

                Filmmaker Wes Ball, acclaimed for his kinetic powerful 8-minute short “Ruin” that had internet audiences blown away brings his dynamic filmmaking flair in the upcoming young adult movie “The Maze Runner.”

                Based on the bestselling book by James Dashner, “The Maze Runner” stars Dylan O’Brien along with a talented young cast – Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie Sangster,  Will Pouter, Ki Hong Lee, Aml Ameen, Alex Flores, Chris Sheffield, Dexter Darden, Jacob Latimore and Blake Cooper who are all trapped in a enclosed space known as The Glade.
“The Maze Runner” is the first book in the bestselling trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where a community of young men discover they’re all trapped in a maze.  When Thomas (O’Brien) surfaces from the bottom of The Glade, things have never been the same, especially when the last one and the only girl in the group followed after Thomas.   They all must work together not only to escape the maze, but solve its riddle and reveal the chilling secret of their entrapment.

                In the movie, the boys are surrounded by massive walls – industrial yet ancient in design, these chilling walls seem out of place in the wild forest where the boys are thriving each day.   Thomas, along with Minho (Ki Hong Lee) tries to go through the massive maze walls to try to get through an opening that will lead them out of the Glade.  But the boys who were there first warned them that nobody has ever made it out alive from the maze.  There’s something that preys on the ones that stay out too long in the maze.

                Director Ball cast a talented group of young boys who are all trapped, most of whom are content in the confines and safety of the glade until Thomas came questioning everything.

                Gally, played by Will Pouter whose film credits include “Son of Rainbow,” “We’re The Millers” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” is at odds with Thomas’ charging into the unknown.  His character, Gally is all about keeping things safe and normal so as to keep them alive.

                Aml Ameen, known for his roles in “Red Tails” and TV’s “Harry’s Law” is the father figure of the group.  The very first glader, he was the first one who taught himself everything there is to know to survive the glade.

                Arriving second in the glade, Newt, played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster (“Game of Thrones,” “Nowhere Boy,” and Ferb’s voice in “Phineas & Ferb) is basically Alby’s right hand.  Newt takes up the reins whenever Alby is not around.

                Chuck – played by Blake Cooper (“Parental Guidance”) “He’s this absolutely adorable kid. Sort of a little brother character,” Ball says. Chuck is younger and smaller than most of the other boys. He tries hard, and nobody expects much out of him, though he gets his hero moments.”

Running through the dangerous maze with Thomas is Minho, played by Ki Hong Lee (TV’s “The Nine Lives of Chloe King”) who doesn’t say much  but  runs fast, making him a very valuable part of the team for solving the riddle of the maze. “He’s the fastest, most bad-ass guy who goes out into the maze every day. He’s kind of a mysterious guy, but will eventually open up, too,” says Ball of Lee’s character.

The only rose among the thorns, Teresa is played by Kaya Scodelario (“Clash of the Titans”) who is probably the harbinger of doom because “all goes bad as soon as she turns up,” director Ball shares of Teresa’s mysterious character.

“The Maze Runner” opens September 17 in theatres nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.