Gifted (2017)

“Gifted” Keeps Giving

We’ll check in with them, as well as the increasingly successful “Gifted” from Fox Searchlight.

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With two decades of success and three Oscar Best Picture winners, Fox Searchlight has always had the capacity to adapt to change. They were among the first companies to go beyond the standard two-city platforms for some of their releases, and haven’t been afraid to act like a more of crossover company while largely sticking to films that qualify as specialized in the broadest definition.

“Gifted” is their biggest success since their awards-enhanced run with “Brooklyn” over a year ago, and second biggest over the past two years. It may be the biggest specialized film of the year — if indeed, it can be called specialized. (Otherwise, the title goes to “The Zookeeper’s Wife” from Focus, which also went wider but was in the multi-hundred theater range from the start.)

What “Gifted” has accomplished is a result of smart decisions that show the value of key strategic moves.

Unlike most Searchlight releases, “Gifted” had no festival play. With mildly favorable reviews at best, it would have been vulnerable to an average upscale New York/Los Angeles platform opening.

Instead, its initial week had 56 theaters across multiple metropolitan areas, with an emphasis on suburbs and broader audiences. That made it sort of a preview week to boost word of mouth. The result showed interest in these wider-audience theaters as well as the usual Searchlight suspects.

Then they rapidly expanded to 1,146 screens the second week. That was the second smart choice. This placed it against the opening of “The Fate of the Furious” as well as Easter weekend. The counterprogramming worked, and the film placed at #6 position — high for its $3.1 million gross.

That sparked word of mouth, which now sustained a fifth week in the Top 10 (it actually went up a slot this week, though the gross fell). At over $19 million, it has a serious shot at $30 million, a decent figure for a film without high-end marketing costs and a likely healthy afterlife in other venues.

Is it a specialized film? Perhaps not. But it needed special handling and it got it.