With production on the film set to begin in South Africa in October, director Phillip Noyce'sThe Giver has added Meryl Streep to its cast. Deadline reports that she'll join Jeff Bridges and Brenton Thwaites in the big screen adaptation of Lois Lowry's 1993 young adult sci-fi novel.
Set in a distant future, the book tells of a society in which the entire range of human emotion has been eradicated by removing any trace of history. Only one individual in the society -- called "the Giver" -- is tasked with remembering the past in case it becomes necessary to make use of it. A twelve-year-old boy, Jonas, is tasked to become the next Giver in line and has his whole world thrown into question when he begins tutelage with the previous, elderly Giver.
Streep, who will play the society's chief elder, recently starred in Hope Springs and can be seen coming up in John Wells' August: Osage County, Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman and Rob Marshall's Into the Woods.
