Fans have been worried about whether or not The Giver would stay faithful to the book and include black and white footage, but that is no longer a question.
When the The Giver trailer was released, fans were very upset that it was completely in color.
“Can someone explain to me why this isn’t in black and white?” one of our commenters (Ms_Woozah) asked. “I honestly don’t get it.”
As fans of Lois Lowry’s classic novel The Giver know, if the film adaptation were to be solely in color, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. In the novel, people in the future cannot see color along with feeling almost any kind of emotion.
Luckily, we now know that the film will not follow the trailer in being completely in color. Yahoo now has confirmation through a featurette that The Giver will be partially in black and white, partially in color. Check it out:
It’s unlikely that the decision to release the film in both black and white and color was one they made after backlash from the first trailer. As the scene in the featurette shows (a scene extended from the trailer), the dialogue wouldn’t make sense in an all-color movie. Jeff Bridges’ The Giver tells Brenton Thwaites’ Jonas that something will happen, and that something is the color change.
Why would they release the trailer in full color if they weren’t planning on making the movie that way? It’s likely that the color trailer was released to hit a bigger audience than the predominantly black and white trailer would.
Previously, star Jeff Bridges said that author Lowry was on set and worked closely with Bridges and director Phillip Noyce to make sure her vision stayed true in the film. Some things were altered, but she was okay with all of the edits.
The Giver opens in theaters August 15, 2014.
The cast includes Meryl Streep (who plays Chief Elder), Thwaites (Jonas), Bridges (The Giver), Alexander Skarsgård as Jonas’ father, Katie Holmes as Jonas’ mother, Taylor Swift as Rosemary, and Cameron Monaghan as Asher.
Official synopsis:
The haunting story of The Giver centers on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. The film is based on Lois Lowry’s beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner the 1994 Newbury Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.