Warner Bros. has acquired screen rights to Lois Lowry's Newbery Award-winning novel The Giver. Red Wagon partners Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher will produce.

The deal gives a new lease on life for a feature adaptation of a beloved novel that has been under continuous option since its publication to great fanfare in 1994 but never made it to a production start.

The story follows a 12-year-old boy living in a futuristic, emotionally suppressed utopian society. He's selected to bear his community's emotional history; as he's loaded up with long-discarded feelings like fear and pleasure, the youth realizes that living a pain-free life comes at a high cost.