Director John Crowley’s adaptation of Donna Tartt’s sprawling Dickensian novel will surely be one of the fall festival season’s hot topics, beginning with a world premiere at TIFF. An epic bildungsroman that takes us through the coming of age of 13-year-old Theo after his mother is killed in a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Goldfinch” has all the makings of an end-of-year prestige pic.

Star Ansel Elgort, who plays an older Theo, will have plenty of chances to flex his acting muscles across a narrative that plunges him into a life of drug addiction and crime as he grapples with orphanhood. Warner Bros. threw its weight behind the film, with a $40 million budget, but the September 13 release date is fast for a film they believe in.

This is Tartt’s longest, but most accessible novel, and the first of hers to make it to the screen after her darker tomes “The Secret History” and “The Little Friend.” The top-drawer cast includes Nicole Kidman, Oakes Fegley, Aneurin Barnard, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, and Jeffrey Wright.