'The Giver' trailer provides a glimpse into the film adaptation of the classic novel

'The Giver' stars Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, and Brenton Thwaites.

A trailer for the film adaptation of Lois Lowry’s classic novel “The Giver” has been released.

The movie stars actor Brenton Thwaites, who is also starring in the 2014 film “Maleficent,” as protagonist Jonas, who is chosen to become the new Receiver of Memories in his dystopian community. Under the tutelage of the current Receiver (Jeff Bridges), he experiences true feelings like happiness and pain for the first time. 

“August: Osage County” actress Meryl Streep portrays the Chief Elder of Jonas’s community, while “True Blood” actor Alexander Skarsgard and Katie Holmes play his parents. Singer Taylor Swift is playing Rosemary, the daughter of the current Receiver.

“From great suffering, great pain, came a solution,” Streep’s character, the Chief Elder, says at the beginning of the trailer. “Communities where disorder became harmony.”

But the Giver tells Jonas, “The way things look and the way things are are very different,” while Jonas himself is beginning to question the community’s ways, asking, “What do you think would happen if you skipped your morning injection?”

Jonas receives the memories from the Giver in a rush, glimpsing images of birth, romance, and music.

Meanwhile, the Chief Elder says, “When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong.”

Not everyone is happy about the new trailer – an article from The Wire about the clip is titled “’The Giver’ trailer is here, and fans of the book collectively shudder.” 

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks a lot like the many other young adult dystopias that have flooded our screens recently,” Wire reporter David Sims wrote of the trailer. “Anyone who's read the book should feel a tremor of fear watching it.”

The movie will be released on Aug. 15.