Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges will team up with producers Nikki Silver and Neil Koenigsberg to adapt Lois Lowry‘s The Giver. According to Variety, Bridges and Silver “came close” to making the feature film back in 2006.
Here’s more from the article: “They had been developing a feature version of the popular book for nearly a decade before it wound up at Warner Bros., which ponied up nearly $1 million to set up the tome with Red Wagon’s Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher in 2007. When the rights became available again, Bridges and Silver stepped up to reacquire them.”
Lowry set The Giver in a dystopian world starring 12-year-old Jonas. The book won the 1994 Newbery Medal and the 1996 William Allen White Award.
Lowry has since released two follow-ups set in The Giver‘s universe, Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004). In 2008, the author revealed on her blog that David Yates was attached to direct The Giver. However, production was postponed by several years as he finished the Harry Potter film series.