Author Lois Lowry: Harvey Weinstein Changed The Ending To 'The Giver' Movie
Author Lois Lowry recently told New York Magazine that the head behind film distributor The Weinstein Company wasn't on board with the book's original ending for the movie.
"I had a little trouble with the ending: In the book, it's ambiguous, but the movie people - and when I say 'movie people,' I mean primarily Harvey Weinstein, the head-honcho guy with the power and the money - felt that the ending should not be so ambiguous," said Lowry.
"You know, I'm a writer, I like to retain subtlety and nuance," she added.
The book, for which author Lowry won a Newbery Award, follows a 12-year-old boy Jonas who lives in a dystopian world disguised as a perfect utopia (Think Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"). At the books end, Jonas runs off with a newborn baby who is about to be killed to find a better life in a far off place supposedly called "elsewhere."
Though Lowry wrote sequels to the book, the reader never learns in "The Giver" if he successfully makes it to his destination alive. Instead, the book ends with Jonas riding a sled down a hill to a town where he describes hearing what he believes must be music for the first time.
Warning: There are spoilers ahead.
We haven't seen the movie yet, but according to The Daily Beast, the ending is more clean cut.
It leaves out any of the guess work with Jonas "sledding to safety at a cute-looking cottage in the real world outside of the community, which they had to trek days of precarious terrain to get to."
"The Giver" is in theaters today and is expected to make around $12 million opening weekend.