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The Giver at Comic-Con 2014!

2014-07-25

The Comic-Con crowd welcomed The Giver team to its stage yesterday in the historic HALL H! The panel discussion included key cast members (Jeff Bridges, Brenton Thwaites, Cameron Monaghan, and Odeya Rush), producer Nikki Silver, director Philip Noyce, and original author Lois Lowry!

photo courtesy of the Weinstein Company

photo courtesy of the Weinstein Company

Lowry expressed how taken she was with Meryl Streep’s interpretation of the Chief Elder, explaining, “I realized after seeing what I’ve seen…I wanted to go back and rewrite the book and rewrite it as it is with Meryl Streep playing the role. She makes it into something so complex and so fascinating.”

Jeff Bridges described the two-decade-long journey it’s been to turn this polarizing novel into a film:  “It was a terrific children’s book and I enjoyed it so much as an adult and found the themes so important and the poetry I just loved. I thought this was going to be an easy one to get made. We tried for 18, 19 years. It proved to be difficult because it was controversial. We were at a banned book conference — it was banned in many areas and many places. It was also taught in many places. That controversy scared some financiers away, but it also inspired me, the energy of this thing. I’m so glad The Weinstein Company and Walden got the courage to put it out.”

And producer Nikki Silver chimed in on the fantastic addition of Taylor Swift to the already star-studded cast:  “We actually wrote the character as a piano-playing character before Taylor was cast. An executive from the Weinstein Company was at one of her shows and was like ‘This is crazy, but it might work.'”

For further reading on The Giver panel at Comic-Con 2014:

NYTimes Artsbeat: Lowry Finally Sees Her Novel On-Screen

Hit Fix: Author Lois Lowry steals the show

Mashable: Jeff Bridges and Lois Lowry Give Us “The Giver” at Comic-Con

io9.com: Lois Lowry Explains How The Giver Movie Improves On Her Book