Warner Bros. has acquired screen rights to Lois Lowry's Newbery Award-winning novel "The Giver" reports Variety.

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.

The feature has been under continuous option since its publication to great fanfare in 1994 but never made it to a production start. Jeff Bridges controlled the project for more than a decade, and came close to producing a version for Walden Media & Fox.