Dylan O’Brien’s big brown eyes widen as he looks up at a massive concrete cross section of the maze, a living puzzle he’s set to conquer. A large camera zooms in on his face, coated in a thin layer of dirt, as he adjusts the collar of his blue shirt. The now 22-year-old is filming The Maze Runner—Wes Ball’s adventure thriller based on James Dashner’s best-selling YA book of the same name—on location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From the highway you’d never know that inside this colossal warehouse (a former Sam’s Club), fall’s hottest flick is deep in production.

“We have eight weeks and 30 million dollars,” Dylan says to me, catching his breath between takes, nodding at the massive labyrinth set he just came from. We’re sitting in director’s chairs under a sign that reads pharmacy. He adds, “If we pull it off, people will be like, ‘How the hell did they do that?'” A tight schedule means long, exhausting days and very little sleep for the young star. But he doesn’t mind: “This will forever be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”

It almost never happened, though. Dylan has said that Ball initially thought his hair was “too MTV” for the role. It’s true—Dylan’s MTV ties run deep. He’s beloved to television audiences for his best-friend role as Stiles Stilinski on the network’s hit show Teen Wolf, recently renewed for a fifth season. But he’s not confined to the small screen. “I’ve always wanted to do action movies,” Dylan says. “I’m a huge Indiana Jones fan. And now I know firsthand that if a stunt coordinator offers you a pad to wear or land on, you take the pad. I throw my body around like a rag doll!”

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The Maze Runner screenwriter James Dashner and star Dylan O’Brien, who plays Thomas in the upcoming film based on Dashner’s trilogy of young adult novels, stopped by the CBR Tiki Room at WonderCon 2014 in Anaheim to chat about bringing the book to life. After spending so much time with the characters in his head, Dashner talks about what it’s like to see them become real and whether the reality lives up to his imagination, as well as what he was most interested in the film getting right. O’Brien then talks about how his future filmmaking inclinations and how that affects the roles he takes and people he works with. Things wrap up with O’Brien divulging just how much of himself he brought to the role of Thomas and whether seeing Thomas played in a certain way will affect how Dashner plans to write him if the book series continues.

On whether the film version matches up to the vision Dashner had in his head when writing the novels: “Honest, total truth, is I cannot believe how much they matched my vision,” said Dashner. “I’ve just been pleasantly surprised, shocked, over and over how spot-on they’ve been with the script, the maze itself, the blade — I just could not be more thrilled, and I’m not just blowing smoke. It’s awesome.”

On what one thing was most important for Dashner that the film get right: “For me it was always that they captured the spirit of the book. I am totally fine with making the changes because a book is not the same as a film,” said Dashner. “But I wanted them to capture the spirit of it, which was the relationships of the characters, the mystery of it — just the ‘what the hell’s going on’ feel to it — and, man, I think they just nailed it.”

On what O’Brien, who wanted to be a cinematographer before becoming an actor, learned about filmmaking from working on the movie: “A lot that goes into my decision-making and where my heart goes is obviously the story and the role, but also the filmmaker I’d be working with,” said O’Brien. “Wes [Ball], this is his first movie, and literally all it took was me having a lunch with him, a couple hours one day before I even had the part, and he just completely sold me on the movie and made me want to work with him because he was insanely smart and he gets movies and really gets storytelling. And also, he’s just like a talented genius with visual effects and, you know, he’s an artists. I really wanted to work with him because as much as the acting is important to me, the other side, the technical aspect, is important as well. I want to direct one day and I always want to be working with guys who I’m learning from everyday on set. Wes entirely that guy for me on this movie. I think one day I’ll be, ‘I was lucky to be in Wes Ball’s first film.’”

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