“We’ll get it right this time,” Danny Boyle and and Aaron Sorkin must have told themselves. They had high hopes for their biopic Steve Jobs. Those hopes are gone.
The movie Steve Jobs was discontinued in over 2,000 theaters due to low ticket sales. That’s more than any movie out in?theaters today. This past weekend, they made a dreadful $823,000. Some may say that’s not too bad. Well, compare that to the $73 million James Bond’s Spectre made in just one weekend. Compare that to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. They already broke records in ticket sales. And their opening weekend is a month from now! ?They hoped to make $19 million the first weekend, which was the weekend of October 9. It’s now November 10. They just crossed the $16 million mark. That’s little more than the 2013 Jobs disaster that starred Ashton Kutcher. Steve Jobs is already called one of the most disappointing movies of the year. Not even the supporting cast of Hollywood heavy hitters like Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels can change that. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized this project. As of today, Steve Jobs is playing in only 421 theaters in the US. So if you’re really itching to see Steve Jobs, check your local listings. Good luck with that.
Some may ask, “What went wrong?” On the surface, this movie had all the tools to succeed. It had a critically acclaimed directors and producers like Boyle and Sorkin. It had A-listers Kate Winslet and Seth Rogen. It had pretty good promotion. So what happened? According to many critics, the movie itself happened. Critics say so much focus was on the Steve Jobs of the 1970s and ’80s. This was the Steve Jobs who treated colleagues miserably, denied his own daughter and saw his company nearly end in failure. The movie stopped in the late 1990s. This was right before Jobs’ and Apple‘s turnaround. This was right before Jobs matured, became a better family man, and right before Apple turned into an international computer tech powerhouse we know today. That’s the problem. What Boyle and Sorkin failed to realize is that people love happy endings and redemption. And movie goers didn’t get it here. Would you see this Steve Jobs biopic?