Some movies spend decades lodged in development hell for a very good reasons, and it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest the only reason The Giver managed to escape and make it onto the big screen was the determination and perseverance of star and producer Jeff Bridges.
The actor had harbored designs of adapting Lois Lowry’s novel for so long that he initially wanted his father Lloyd to play the title role, and he died in 1998. By the time the dystopian sci-fi finally made into theaters in 2014, Bridges Jr. was the ideal age to inhabit the part, and he brought some seriously talented friends along for the ride.
The Giver boasted Patriot Games, The Bone Collector, and Salt‘s Phillip Noyce behind the camera, while Academy Award winner Bridges was joined in front of it by fellow Oscar winner and industry legend Meryl Streep, as well as Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, and and Taylor Swift, the latter of whom hadn’t yet carved out her niche for almost exclusively starring in awful movies.
In the end, the film could only cobble together $67 million at the box office in the face of unenthusiastic reviews, with the story finding a hero embracing destiny with the assist of a love interest and wizened sage of a mentor having long since become overplayed during the YA boom of the 2000s and 2010s.
However, almost a decade on and The Giver has stepped into the light, with FlixPatrol surprisingly revealing that iTunes subscribers have been willing to give it a shot this weekend, even if the end results are as predictable as they are unexciting.
