Engineering the Shining Maze with Adam Savage of the Mythbusters

Watch Adam Savage re-create the hedge-maze from the Shining, one of the most iconic movie props ever made

If you plan on creating something for a world-traveling art exhibit, you better bring your “A-game.” If Mythbuster, Adam Savage, may be in attendance, best be bringing your “A+ game.”

You see, there is currently a traveling art exhibit featuring the works of film maker, Stanley Kubrick. One if Kubrick’s most famous movies is his adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining,” a horror and suspense classic.  Well our resident Mythbuster visited this exhibit three separate times to take it all in. It was the third visit when Mr. Savage’s attention focused on the model of the hedge-maze, which he was enamored with. So much so he went home and re-watched The Shining, only to realize that this maze was not in the movie and not even close to the one in the film.

Let the geeking-out commence!

Adam went into full-on research and design mode. Discovering that within the movie there is actually four versions of the maze (none of them being similar to the one in the exhibit, mind you). He determined perfection must be achieved.

Watch the in-depth build “Replicating ‘The Shining’s’ Overlook Maze Model”

After spending countless hours watching, measuring and mapping the maze in the movie, Adam Savage had a plan, he was after-all a movie prop-maker well before he was a super-sleuth Muthbuster. Fifty hours of tedious labor later, and you have hedge-maze perfection! So perfect, that he was actually contacted by the Stanley Kubrick exhibit, asking if it could be incorporated into the exhibit. The answer was, of-course, “yes!”