“When Amy Pascal allowed ‘Steve Jobs’ to leave Sony for Universal, the studio chief fretted that she had let a modern day ‘Citizen Kane’ slip through her fingers,” Brent Lang reports for Variety. “In the end, Pascal, whose job was already threatened by a string of flops like ‘After Earth’ and ‘White House Down,’ couldn’t justify the risk.”
“‘Steve Jobs’ hit a stumbling block in its national release. It debuted to a measly $7.3 million, only a little more than the $6.7 million that ‘Jobs,’ a critically derided film about the iPhone father with Ashton Kutcher, made in its initial weekend. Going into the weekend, some tracking suggested that the picture would do as much as $19 million,” Lang reports. “So what went wrong?”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s pretty much pure fiction and anybody who knows Steve Jobs and who wasn’t paid by Universal, has lamented that the opportunistic little flick was even made, much less released.
“Universal believes that the picture can recover,” Lang reports. “It’s still hard to see how the film turns a profit. The picture cost $30 million to make and at least as much to market. That means that ‘Steve Jobs’ needs to do at least $120 million in order to break even. Given that the film is dialogue-driven and lacks a major star, its foreign prospects seem bleak. It’s almost entirely a domestic play, and so far it’s only made about $10 million.”
“Few would fault Fassbender’s performance, but his casting may have been disastrous from a commercial standpoint,” Lang reports. “A study by Piedmont Media Research found that audiences’ interest in seeing ‘Steve Jobs’ dipped after they found out Fassbender was headlining the drama. Having a DiCaprio or a Robert Downey Jr. in the title role may have broadened ‘Steve Jobs’ appeal.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Universal and the major studios are in the business of wide releases backed by a major marketing spend, not platform offerings, yet Jobs is playing like a quintessential specialty release,” Pamela McClintock reports for The Hollywood Reporter. “Universal wouldn’t comment on its decision to go wide with Steve Jobs, versus sticking to a platform run until Golden Globe and Oscar nominations are announced. Oscar winners including The King’s Speech and Birdman played for weeks in select theaters before attempting a nationwide break. And Birdman never played in more than 1,213 theaters.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 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.
Poor Woz. We can imagine how they rode roughshod over him. Woz reportedly got $200,000 for “consulting.” There was no consulting; none that was listened to by Sorkin et al., at least. Otherwise the Woz character would never have said “the graphical user interface was stolen.” If Woz objected, which we assume he must have at some point, they told him “this is how movies are made, Woz.”
No, that $200,000 was paid to have Woz’s backing. It was for marketing and insurance, not consulting. So that these peddlers of lies could, if and when pressed, trot out an Apple co-founder and say, “Look, we have Woz’s approval!”
Well, no, geniuses, no matter who you trot out with a rubber stamp of approval, you cannot have Steve Wozniak say, “the graphical user interface was stolen.” The origin of the GUI is an essential truth. You can’t change that and have it come out of one of the last people on earth who’d ever utter it and expect to retain your core audience. “Steve Jobs” lost us the second we heard that line in the trailer. From then on, we expected the worst. We’re glad it bombed. It deserves to bomb.
Sorkin’s penchant for playing fast and lose with the facts and for concocting scenes and dialog out of whole cloth doomed this mess from the start. Hollywood may heap awards on this thing (or, hopefully, not), but it’s an opportunistic pack of lies regardless.
SEE ALSO:
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
