THE MAZE RUNNER Conversation for a Cause Photos at Nerd HQ

There were several events that I could’ve attended on the first full day of Comic-Con, some of fandoms that we cover, but unfortunately, since many of the events that I wanted to attend happened to take place at the same time, I had to choose one, thus I chose to go to an off-site event at Nerd HQ.

(l. to r.) Author James Dashner, executive producer Wyck Godfrey, Dylan O’Brien, and director Wes Ball

20th Century Fox didn’t include The Maze Runner into their lineup at the Convention Center, so it was such a wonderful thing that the people at Nerd HQ were able to gather some kind of presence for this movie. Luckily, Dylan O’Brien, the lead actor in the movie, was already going to be at Comic-Con for another panel (Teen Wolf), and author James Dashner was set to attend as well, it was probably easy enough to get director Wes Ball and executive producer Wyck Godfrey to join in (however, I should note that I really don’t know if it was as easy as I say it is to get them to come as they could be very busy with other projects or just post-production of the movie as filming just wrapped up.)

Dylan O’Brien seemed very comfortable as being the only actor of the panel as many were there to see him, however, James did field most of the questions. The highlight, of course, was that the 250 of us that paid to get into the panel were extremely fortunate enough to catch the raw footage of the movie! They even explained to us that not even the studio execs have seen this footage and that Wes had spent the days driving from Baton Rouge, LA to San Diego, CA editing this footage to make it presentable to us.

I cannot say enough good things about this footage. Out of everything that I’ve seen at Comic-Con, in regards to footage and clips and trailers, The Maze Runner exceeded them all, and that is truly saying something, especially when this wasn’t even an official part of Comic-Con. Hardly any dialogue was used in the footage, but the emotion in the characters’ faces, the intensity of the scenes, and the imagery that was shown were all beyond my expectation. I am extremely excited to see more and more of this movie as we get closer to the release date of February 14, 2014.