After over a decade of starts and stops, the film adaptation of Lois Lowry’s grade-school staple The Giver will arrive in theaters this summer. The first trailer for the film, directed by Phillip Noyce (The Bone Collector, Patriot Games), gives a glimpse into the restrictive, “utopian” world known as the Community.
A quick refresher on the original story for those who have been out of school for quite some time: The Community is a seemingly perfect society in which pain, struggle, and all basic human feeling have been effectively removed through “Sameness.” At the age of 12, each child is assigned a role that they are expected to adhere to for the rest of their lives, and everyone accepts these commandments without reservation. Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is chosen to become the Receiver of Memory, and under the tutelage of the Giver (Jeff Bridges), learns for the first time about love, happiness, war, and sadness. After receiving this knowledge, he decides to rebel against the Community and reveal it as a fraud.
The Giver features an interesting mix of veterans (Bridges, Meryl Streep), a fresh face (Thwaites), and even a pop star (Taylor Swift); Alexander Skarsgård and Katie Holmes also play Jonas’ parents. Little has been said so far about the details of the adaptation, but from the look of this trailer it could be an engrossing depiction that doesn’t stray too far from Lowry’s original story.
