Twenty years in the making, the prize-winning book The Giver gets a movie with star power. Recently, movie goers get a glimpse of the film with the first look trailer. Depending on who you ask, people either love it, hate it, or are confused.

The Giver novel was written by Lois Lowry in 1993, but the film debuts in a deluge of dystopian Young Adult novels-turned-film adaptation universe. Some would argue that members of the YA dystopian universe, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the upcoming The Maze Runner, were inspired by Lowry's The Giver. And let's not forget the short-story, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson.

The Giver also stars Katie Holmes, and Taylor Swift, among others. Lowry is also co-screenwriter for the film, which is also Bridges' labor of love, since he had tried to get the movie off the ground for a while, Entertainment Weekly reported.

The novel has no real action scenes. Its main character is a thoughtful 12-year-old boy named Jonas, not a brooding, bad-ass teenage warrior. Streep, who plays the Chief Elder and perhaps villain, goes against Bridges as The Giver; he counsels Brenton Thwaites' Jonas, the New York Daily News reported. Jonas has been chosen to become the "Receiver of memory."

The Giver is a dystopian thriller set in a world that is reduced to "sameness." Much like the film Divergent, everything and everyone is controlled, categorized, and assigned, from coupling, the application of spouses, to children, and birth. Swift plays Rosemary, who in the past was chosen to be the receiver of memory.

One of the most chilling lines in the trailer is delivered by Streep: "Qhen people have freedom to choose, they choose wrong." That line reportedly not from the book itself. Parade Magazine recently listed some of the top 10 lines from the novel. Here are a few: "If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever;" "I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid" and, "You may lie."

The Giver is expected to debut in theaters on Aug. 15 of this year.

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