From the director of the surprise hit “500 Days of Summer,” Marc Webb
helms his latest endearing story “Gifted” - starring the world’s beloved
captain Chris Evans along with the über-talented Oscar winner Octavia Spencer
and rising young star Grace McKenna.
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| Photo credit: 20th Century Fox |
Frank Adler (Chris Evans) is a single man
raising his spirited young niece Mary (Mckenna Grace) in a coastal town in
Florida. But Mary is a brilliant child
prodigy and Frank's intention that she lead a normal life are thwarted when the
seven-year-old’s command of mathematics comes to the attention of his
formidable mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan)—a wealthy Bostonian whose plans for
her granddaughter threaten to separate Mary and Frank. As family tensions and disconnections flare,
uncle and niece find support in Roberta (Octavia Spencer), their protective
landlady and best friend, and Mary’s teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate), a young
woman whose concern for her student soon develops into a relationship with her
uncle as well.
“Gifted” began
its journey to the big screen when producer Karen Lunder, who has produced an
assortment of films including “Arrival,” remembers a conversation with producer
Andy Cohen in which she asked: “‘What do you have that’s great and different?
What is the thing you’re most excited about?’ He sent me “Gifted.” When I read the script, it had this timeless
quality to it. It felt like the kind of
movies I grew up watching: it was a throwback of sorts to films of the 70’s and
early 80’s that weren’t afraid to make you laugh and cry – that were both
escapist and real.”
Like Lunder and
Cohen, director Webb responded immediately to the writing. “I kept on waiting
for this script to get bad, but it just kept getting better. It was simple, warm and uncynical. The
writing felt nourishing to me. Mary and
Frank are something like a comedy team with a lot of heart. After spending so many years on bigger
movies, I just wanted to hang out with these two.”
In his career,
Chris Evans has judiciously chosen a balance of blockbuster and smaller, more
interior films. He picked “Gifted” for many reasons but says: “It was more the
director than the role. You can have a great role and a great script. You can
have a lot of pieces in place but if you don’t have a great director, you don’t
have much. So for me it was Marc Webb.”
Webb is
particularly pleased that “Gifted” is a movie in which all the intellectual
powerhouses are women. “It’s a movie where women are really brilliant and it’s
not done as a stunt. It’s something that feels weirdly rare, I don’t know
why. I love the idea of having girls who
are good at math, women who are good at math. I mean, it happens in the world
but we just don’t always recognize that in cinema.”
Webb also thinks
that fathers will respond to the message of the film, if his own reaction is
any example: “I’m a forty-year-old dude, and I got choked up. All the burly
grips hid behind the duvateen (light blocking fabric) because they were crying. I think men are not encouraged to feel, which
I think is one of the challenges that Frank has to face, but of course men are
emotional creatures too.”
“Gifted” will open in cinemas on May 3 from 20th
Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.
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