“Steve Jobs,” the Universal fictionalized drama that trades off the name of the deceased Apple co-founder, sank in its second weekend of wide release.
The flick, whose screenplay was penned by Aaron Sorkin, earned a dismal $2.6 million, a 65% plummet, bringing its domestic total to a meager $14.5 million.
The movie has been widely criticized, including by us, due to the fact that it’s pretty much pure fiction and anybody who knew Steve Jobs and who wasn’t paid off by Universal to back the film, has lamented that the opportunistic little flick was even made, much less released.
As we’ve written previously, you can’t call a movie “Steve Jobs” and then make up reams of total fiction. We know the facts. The graphical user interface was not stolen. Sorkin’s penchant for playing fast and lose with the facts and for concocting scenes and dialog out of whole cloth doomed this opportunistic pack of lies from the start.
MacDailyNews Take: All’s well that ends well!
SEE ALSO:
Universal’s ‘Steve Jobs’ flick bombs: Why Sony was right to pass – October 26, 2015
Aaron Sorkin ‘Steve Jobs’ fantasy flops hard – October 26, 2015
Steve Jobs’ widow continues to speak out against ‘Steve Jobs’ movie – October 22, 2015
Mossberg: The Steve Jobs I knew isn’t in Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Steve Jobs’ movie – October 21, 2015
Why Danny Boyle filmed ‘Steve Jobs’ in three different formats – October 16, 2015
‘Steve Jobs’ movie is fiction, blatantly inaccurate; yet another con job from Aaron Sorkin – October 14, 2015
Paid consultant Woz on ‘Steve Jobs’ movie claims accuracy doesn’t matter – October 13, 2015
Universal releases new 2:20-minute scene from ‘Steve Jobs’ – October 9, 2015
The Steve Jobs in ‘Steve Jobs’ is a fictional character invented by Aaron Sorkin – October 8, 2015
Jony Ive joins chorus of insiders’ complaints about new ‘Steve Jobs’ movie – October 8, 2015
The Strange Saga of ‘Steve Jobs’: A widow’s threats, high-powered spats and the Sony hack – October 7, 2015
‘Steve Jobs’ director Danny Boyle warns of ‘tremendous, terrifying power’ of tech giants like Apple – October 7, 2015
Forbes reviews ‘Steve Jobs’: ‘An electrifying interpretive dance of abstract biographical cinema’ – October 7, 2015
Steve Jobs’ daughter Lisa skips movie screening, but parties with cast – October 7, 2015
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reviews ‘Steve Jobs’ movie: ‘I loved it’ – October 7, 2015
Aaron Sorkin: Steve Jobs just wanted to be loved – October 6, 2015
The ‘Steve Jobs’ movie that Sony, DiCaprio, and Bale didn’t want is now an Oscar favorite – October 6, 2015
Michael Fassbender already the odds-on favorite to win an Oscar for ‘Steve Jobs’ – October 5, 2015
Steve Jobs’ widow and friends take aim at Hollywood over ‘Steve Jobs’ biopic – October 5, 2015
‘Steve Jobs’ biopic too nasty to win Best Picture award – October 2, 2015
Andy Hertzfeld: ‘Steve Jobs’ movie ‘deviates from reality everywhere’ but ‘aspires to explore and expose the deeper truths’ – October 2, 2015
Aaron Sorkin blasts Apple’s Tim Cook over ‘Steve Jobs’ critique: ‘You’ve got a lot of nerve’ – September 25, 2015
That Sorkin grossly misjudged the movie’s audience is less a concern than the fact that he blew a fantastic opportunity to tell a compelling story about what really happened to an extraordinary individual. What a rich history Sorkin had to play with as he wrote. Yet he used virtually none of it, preferring to use his tried and true Sorkinisms – heck, they worked on TV. 😒
Sorkin was clearly not the man for the job. He understood NOTHING about Steve Jobs or what drove him.
I know. Even the “stealing” scene was a huge opportunity for playing with conventions in a funny and more truthful way.
Steve could have said something about “stealing” GUI concepts from PARC to highlight his view of his Mac team as a band of pirates.
Then Woz could have called him on it and pointed out that PARC showed them willingly and had been paid with Apple stock.
Reversing the myth would have been great fun for anyone familiar with the true history!
That’s certainly what I took away from the film and Sorkin. Seeing Sorkin in person and hearing him speak he surprisingly (or maybe not) comes across a bit doofusy. Clueless he was to this amazing opportunity taking the low road to Nowheresville.
There will never be the Steve Jobs “movie” that everyone is yearning to see. But I do feel this can be made into a episode-like series based as accurate as possible. Have either HBO or Netflix host the series and watch how much more profitable and entertaining it can be. This I would gladly pay a season pass, easy.
get ya some of that, Seth. POS
The movie is great art and highly worth seeing. Sprain uses the computer as a metaphor for Steve, who is understood through his relationship with his boss (father figure) and Lisa (daughter figure). Steve is the black box of NEXT. He is the end-to-end controlled Mac that is both brilliant and deeply flawed. He is the iMac, which retains the control, etc, but also is something you can see into and aesthetically enjoy.
The movie is BRILLIANT is you are looking for art. If you want a perfect bio, well you’ll find it elsewhere. But like great art, the perfect bio won’t teach you as much about the truth displayed here as Sorkin’s vision will.
Thus, the movie will endure. It will win awards. That will lead more people to watch it. I expect it will be seen as the go-to movie in future generations for exploring the brilliance and challenge of Steve Jobs.
Wtf autocorrect. Sprain = Sorkin.
No, I think you had it right with Sprain in the first place…
I won’t be voting for it. “No way. no how.”
But, but, but …dudes ! Chill. It is just a freakin movie, bro! What did you expect? Art? Better luck next time…
/sarcasm
I’m a bit surprised that no-one makes a comparison with the movie “the imitation game”, the movie about Alan Turing, which contains an awful lot of bullshit about Turing’s life and role in WW2 that’s just wrong. Still, I liked that movie; it honors him and isn’t called “Alan Turing”.
Not going to pay to watch “steve jobs|”.
Put the line in that the operating system is stolen, play that over and over . . . and over, and then wonder why Apple fans stay away!
There’s a perfect word for this in German–Schadenfreude! Sorkin deserves everything he’s got coming to him, including losing his shirt for this pile of trash that doesn’t deserve to be called a movie.
And sullying his reputation, too.
Looks like he will never be asked to write the screenplay for something like “Elon Musk”, eh?
The feeling of schadenfreude is common in the film biz. Nobody wants anyone else to have success and the more spectacular the failure, the more pleasure derived from it by others. The ultimate guilty pleasure.
Christian Bale now looks like a genius.
Maybe someday he will star in a genuine movie about Steve Jobs.
Saw it a few days ago. What an absolute TURD. Fantastic acting by Fassbender/Daniels/TitanicChick but the movie was boring, contrived and way over the top. Steve comes off as an impossibly comically irritating untalented narcissist.
Watch “The Man Behind the Machine” and read “Becoming Steve Jobs” instead.
I haven’t seen it, 20 year old Step-Son saw it and was disappointed in how negative they portrayed Steve. He didn’t like it.