Anthony Breznican of Entertainment Weekly introduced the panel for The Giver, on Wednesday’s San Diego Comic Con panel in Hall H. The book that the film is based on, Lois Lowry‘s groundbreaking 1993 novel was arguably the prototype for the recent trend of Young Adult dystopian sci-fi that includes book series like The Hunger Games and Divergent.

Director Philip Noyce introduced, via a pre-recorded video message, footage from the film which gave a great overview of the false utopia of the world of The Giver and the discovery of its dark history.

Breznican then introduced author Lois Lowry, Brenton Thwaites, who plays Jonas, Jeff Bridges, who plays The Giver, Odeya Rush, who plays Fiona, and producer Nikki Silver.

Thursday’s San Diego Comic-Con kicked off with a presentation by DreamWorks Animation in the convention center’s hallowed Hall H.

Ferguson opened with a joke about how SDCC is the weekend all domestic cats dread as their owners dress up in weird costumes and leave them alone for the weekend. He also mentioned that he’s moderating the panel because he’s “frightened of Jeffrey Katzenberg” and of course due to his appearances in the How to Train Your Dragon films. He then introduced a trailer for the upcoming film Home.

First was the panel for Home with director Tim Johnson, and voice actor Jim Parsons (from The Big Bang Theory). Johnson mentioned that the film is still six months away from finishing and that he first began the project two and a half years ago upon reading the book the film’s based on, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex