Salt Director Phillip Noyce May Direct The Giver Adaptation

Lois Lowry's s 1993 award-winning novel The Giver was a staple of just about every 90s kid's diet of books, and Hollywood has been trying to capitalize on that for years. Studios have tried and tried to make an adaptation of the book, but for whatever reason the project has always managed to hit roadblocks that prevent it from actually getting made. Well, now things are starting to look good again as the film may have finally found a director.

Phillip Noyce, who is best known for helming films like Salt, The Quiet American, Patriot Games and The Bone Collector, is now negotiating for the chance to helm the film version of the Lowry classic, according to Variety. The Weinstein Compay and Walden Media are backing the project - along with producers Jeff Bridges and Nikki Silver, but they had no comment about the filmmaker choice. For those unfamiliar with the book, the story is set in a dystopian future where all history, memory and emotion has been eliminated. The reader follows a boy named Jonas as he is selected to be the next Receiver of Memories and becomes an apprentice for The Giver, the old man who has long held the position. As Jonas learns more and more, however, he begins to see the cracks and holes of the society, and becomes aware of some truly horrific practices. Bridges is still attached to play The Giver.

The most recent version of the script was written by Vadim Perelman, who has been attached to the project since 2006. The studio has not yet set a production start date for the project - not a surprise considering they won't even say it has a director - but at the very least it's interesting that something is being done with the property.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.