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‘A lot of things wrong’ as Jobs movie opens with disappointing revenues

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The long-awaited Jobs movie opened this weekend, with Box Office Mojo reporting that it took seventh place in the weekend openings, grossing $6.7M against top-grossing movie The Butler at $25M. Distributor Open Road Films had expected Jobs to gross $8-9M.

Playing at 2,381 locations, Jobs opened in seventh place with an estimated $6.7 million. While it was never expected to match The Social Network, it’s still very disappointing to note that the Steve Jobs biopic earned less than one-third as much as the Facebook story. This is also one of star Ashton Kutcher’s lowest openings ever—among nationwide releases, it’s only ahead of 2003’s My Boss’s Daughter ($4.9 million).

Jobs had plenty of issues, including awful reviews and a comedy star playing dramatic (almost never a good idea). Most important, though, was the movie’s apparent tonal issues: while plenty of people enjoy their Apple products, the deification of Steve Jobs is a bit of a turn off. Jobs received a weak “B-” CinemaScore, and all indications are that it will disappear from theaters quickly …

The movie had been heavily promoted, and with so many pre-release clips out there you almost felt like you’d seen the movie before it hit theaters. Reviews were best described as mixed, with critics giving it a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 25 percent.

Steve Wozniak, who had declined to act as a consultant to the movie after reading the script and saying he was “abhorred” by it, said that “there were a lot of things wrong,” with Jobs portrayed in too glowing a light. Speaking in an interview on Bloomberg TV, Wozniak blamed Ashton Kutcher’s reverence for Jobs, saying that Kutcher appeared to have had something of a producer as well as acting role:

Ashton has too much of this ‘fan’ thing, like a cult leader … He could not see that [Jobs] had a lot of flaws in knowing how to run things and execute and make products that were worthwhile at his time there. […]

[Jobs] failed with the Apple III, he failed with the Lisa, he failed with the Macintosh. People don’t know from the movie how deeply the Macintosh failed, how deeply our stock slide down, how we had to regroup quickly and build a Macintosh market over three years.

[ooyala code=”N3d3F2ZDrQqwr_Zn0CfgWARTxuT2ojnj” player_id=”null”]

Wozniak clearly feels he wasn’t given sufficient credit for his role, and that the importance of the Apple II – the product bringing in the revenues to support the marketing of the Macintosh – was underplayed, but also spoke up for other key players in the company at the same time.

Two of Apple’s early employees, Daniel Kottke and Bill Fernandez, had commented on a series of inaccuracies in the movie.

Wozniak is consulting on the Aaron Sorkin movie, which doesn’t yet have a release date.

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Comments

  1. storageous - 11 years ago

    They always ran the risk of this, so many people have read the book. So many people have their own views and opinons and if like me have seen pirates of silicon valley know how good the original was. The only element I see of this is bringing life to the later part of Job’s life which pirates of silicon valley did not

    https://storageous.wordpress.com/

  2. NQZ (@surgesoda) - 11 years ago

    Pirates of Silicon valley was WAY better than Jobs

  3. Dime09 (@dime09) - 11 years ago

    There’s alot of things wrong with Apple.The movie is disappointing because… Apple… is disappointing!!

  4. Erik (@Elokens_) - 11 years ago

    Not sure what they were expecting for a turnout for a “documentary” style film? It’s not going to be a blockbuster…..

  5. totencough - 11 years ago

    “…a comedy star playing dramatic (almost never a good idea)”

    That’s not true at all. Comedy is the hardest to play, generally making comedians the best at drama. Look at Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the entire cast of Firefly/Serenity.

    This movie just doesn’t have the style to pique public interest. That, coupled with bad reviews, just confirms the public’s disinterest and seals the movie’s fate.

  6. Jun Kyoung - 11 years ago

    Interviewer in the video is slightly annoying.

  7. Woz. Love that guy!

  8. mikabass (@mikabass) - 11 years ago

    Anyone ever watch Pirates of Silicon Valley and see how Steve Jobs would always criticize Woz’s eating habits. kind of ironic. just a side note.

  9. PMZanetti - 11 years ago

    Yikes, seeing Woz go off about how dumb and inaccurate and not even entertaining the movie was, I am a less inclined to even bother until its available to rent.

  10. Bob Black - 11 years ago

    I don’t understand… I got my email from the cult center showing me the times and locations of the movie and when I am supposed to watch it… there are millions of us..so maybe it will take a week or so before the amazing, magical movie shows better reviews..

  11. drtyrell969 - 11 years ago

    Jobs gets a second chance, and unknowingly makes tyrannical devices cool (spotlighted drives, cameras everywhere, power supplies that can’t be removed, and soon thumb print phones), but won’t give up his patents to others / Google. Jobs is irradiated (the ancient weapon of CIA, used on Chavez). Jobs recovers. Jobs is irradiated again, this time with a dose that is ensured to be lethal. Tim Cook plays good boy. Jobs endorses Tim largely on medication. Jobs dies. Tim takes over, and despite Job’s dying wish if protecting their tech for nefarious hands, immediately surrenders several key patents and prepares Apple for the demise that will make their acquisition affordable. Google hoovers at $900/share, Apple remains down 30%.

  12. Bryant Rydberg - 11 years ago

    Most movie fans are not dumb and check reviews before spending $$$. Reviews are much more important now due to movie tickets continuing to rise ($12 in my area). So movies with bad reviews will not do well because people are not willing to spend allot for crap.

  13. How about how poorly this movie was marketed?? I mean seriously, a movie I was intrigued to see just popped into the theatres with minimal promotion. You know who promoted right? I hate to say it but freaking Fast and Furious 6!! That movie did spectacular in sales all bc they hyped the crap out of it. Jobs came silent in the night released like a whisper. Whoever ran promotions on this film dropped the ball big time.
    In it’s 3rd week in theatres The Smurfs 2 was only 2 mil short of jobs grand opening. That should tell you enough.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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