The Chief Elder only appears for a short time in the beginning of the book, but in the film, Streep’s character tries to keep stability as Jonas becomes more enlightened and questions his community.

As such, fans of The Giver were more than prepared to wield their 140-character pitchforks should the casting of the beloved central character, Jonas, defy their expectations.

The Giver is due in theaters August 15.

Noyce and "Giver" author Lois Lowry tell TheWrap on why their lead character was aged up and why dystopian YA is all the rage these days ...

See video: Brenton Thwaites Sees Piano-Playing Taylor Swift Inside Jeff Bridges’ Mind in ‘The Giver’ Clip Characters on a path for destruction are something of a Monaghan specialty.

Jonas's age — as well as his story's comparative simplicity, its length, and its '94 Newbery Medal win — indicate that The Giver isn't actually YA at all: it's a book for middle-grade readers ...

It’s taken nearly 20 years to get “The Giver” — a popular science-fiction Young Adult novel and winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal — to the big screen.

The key problem with The Giver is that setting a story in a world without emotion makes all the characters boring. Jonas' father (Alexander Skarsgard) is a naive dunce.

Since January, Molin has played Jonas, the story's central character, in the Indiana Repertory Theater's stage production. The show closed just yesterday.

'The Giver' trailer: A deep diveWe open with the soothing, familiar voice of Meryl Streep setting the stage for what we’re about to see: “From great suffering, great pain, came a solution ...

Singled out to become “Receiver of Memories,” Jonas begins training with Bridges’ character — The Giver — a worn, tormented mentor who lives alone in a house full of books.