Aaron Sorkin’s mixed reviewed Steve Jobs movie already won a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and was nominated for even more. Now the film is showing up on the 2016 Oscar nominees list with the Steve Jobs biopic up for two Oscars at the upcoming 88th Academy Awards.
The movie Steve Jobs last night won two of the four Golden Globes awards for which it was nominated. Aaron Sorkin picked up the award for Best Screenplay, and Kate Winslet won Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. However, Michael Fassbender lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio in Best Performance by an Actor. Daniel Pemberton, who wrote the score for the movie, was also beaten by Ennio Morricone for The Hateful Eight.
Fassbender being beaten to the best actor award by DiCaprio had a certain degree of irony: DiCaprio had previously been offered and turned down the title role in Steve Jobs.
Despite claiming to be lost for words, Sorkin managed a wry acknowledgement of the fact that the movie bombed at the box office …
The Sorkin/Boyle movie Steve Jobs may have bombed at the box office once the opening weekend was over, but it at least looks like it may pick up the consolation prize of some awards.
The Daily Mail notes that the movie has been nominated for three BAFTA awards following four Golden Globe nominations last month. Michael Fassbender, who plays the title role, has already won the International Star prize at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
The BAFTA nominations are for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Michael Fassbender) and Best Supporting Actress (Kate Winslet). The earlier Golden Globe nominations were for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Michael Fassbender), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting role (Kate Winslet) and Best Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin).
Less enthusiastic were Apple execs like Tim Cook and Jony Ive, and Silicon Valley insiders like Walt Mossberg. Many of those close to Steve said that the movie bore little relation to real events, among them Steve Wozniak and John Sculley,
Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs biopic ultimately may not have performed so hot in theaters with reports saying the film likely lost money, but Michael Fassbender who portrayed the title character in the movie is being recognized for his performance. Earlier today the Golden Globe Award nominees were announced with Kate Winslet, Michael Fassbender, and Aaron Sorkin among the list of nominees credited for their roles in the Steve Jobs movie.
Despite a strong weekend opening, the Sorkin/Boyle movie Steve Jobs appears to have bombed in its nationwide rollout, grossing just $7.3M against earlier estimates of $19M. That gives it a total take so far of around $10M, which Variety says leaves it unlikely to turn 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.
The piece notes that the earlier success of Sorkin’s The Social Network may have created false hopes …
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Writing in his column in The Verge, Walt Mossberg – who says he spent “scores of hours” in conversation with Steve Jobs across 14 years – says that the man depicted in the Sorkin/Boyle movie is not the Steve Jobs he knew.
Steve Jobs wasn’t perfect. He was difficult. He was unnecessarily rude and brusque at times. He lied. But he also mellowed and grew as a person, and that mellowing coincided with the best part of his career. Mr. Sorkin opts to hide all of that from his audience. The best of the real Steve Jobs begins to unfold just as Steve Jobs ends.
A lengthy piece in Hollywood Reporter earlier this month – leaning heavily on emails leaked from the Sony hack – provides a lot of insight into what was going on behind the scenes in the run up to the making of the movie. This included the fact that Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures, knew from the start that the project was going to be challenging …
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The Sorkin/Boyle Steve Jobs movie has grossed $2.26M to date, reports Deadline, as it rolled out to a further 56 theaters over the weekend. The movie had earlier achieved the highest average earnings per theater of any movie this year on its opening weekend.
The limited rollout to a total of just 60 theaters meant it didn’t earn enough to make the top 10, headed by Goosebumps – which was on show at 3,500 locations.
While the movie has been criticized by some for the artistic liberties taken with the truth, with even Steve Wozniak and key system software designer Andy Hertzfeld saying that almost nothing shown really happened like that, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin defended the movie at a London press conference …
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Interviewed by Bloomberg, Steve Wozniak reiterated his comments about the difference between fact and fiction in the Steve Jobs movie, saying that almost nothing shown actually happened, but that it was about personalities, not facts.
It’s a great movie. If Steve Jobs had been making movies, this is the quality it would have had.
Asked about the accusation made by Tim Cook and other Apple execs that movies about Jobs were opportunistic and didn’t accurately portray the man, Woz said that the movie showed Jobs at an earlier time in his life …
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Steve Jobs, the controversial Sorkin/Boyle not-quite biopic, achieved the highest opening weekend Per-Theater Average (PTA) of any movie this year, reports Deadline. The movie also gave director Danny Boyle the best ever weekend average of his career.
The feature grossed sizzling $520,942, averaging $130,236. By comparison, Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) grossed over $360K in 10 theaters its debut weekend, averaging $36K. The drama about the Apple founder, adapted by Aaron Sorkin, easily outpaced Sicario‘s $67K debut PTA.
It’s not an all-time record, though …
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[Ed. Note: This is a guest post by Lontih Khatami who [disclosure] works at the same studio, Universal, that produced the film but did not work on the film. Spoiler: it’s better than iSteve]
Interested in seeing the new Steve Jobs movie that Universal is releasing this weekend in select markets (with wide expansion set for October 23)? Well, me, too. Only I’ve already seen it five times within the past dozen days. And I eagerly await my next few viewings.
You’re probably wondering how I’ve been able to see this inevitable Oscar contender so many times prior to its initial release. The more important thing to ponder, though, is “Why would anybody WANT to see it so many times in such a short timeframe?” The answer to that question, quite simply, is because the movie is masterfully made, and it works on so many different levels. Not unlike so many of the products the title character brought into this world…
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Interviewed on Conan, Steve Jobs screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin said that he understood why Tim Cook had described movies about Jobs as “opportunistic.” Sorkin had previously responded angrily, then later apologized.
Tim Cook and Steve Jobs were very close friends, and I absolutely understand the man protecting the memory and the legacy of his friend.
He did, however, make a slight dig at criticizing movies without seeing them …
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With Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs biopic set to hit theaters tomorrow, Universal Pictures has released what will likely be the final clip before the movie’s premiere. In the two-minute scene, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played by Seth Rogen) questions Michael Fassbender’s Steve Jobs about his role in the computer industry.
Woz points out that Jobs has no engineering skill or experience and that most of his greatest accomplishments were built on the work of others, including Woz himself—yet Jobs seems to get most of the credit. Jobs goes on the defensive, positioning himself as the “conductor” of an engineering orchestra.
You can see the full scene below.
Director Danny Boyle with the cast of Steve Jobs
Despite the film being based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized Steve Jobs biography, the upcoming Aaron Sorkin-written biopic telling the story of the late Apple co-founder isn’t being totally welcomed by Tim Cook and company. As we’ve seen play out over the last few weeks, the Apple CEO called recent movies including Sorkin’s that depict Jobs in a not entirely positive light as “opportunistic”. A counter punch then apology from Sorkin followed.
The film’s director Danny Boyle isn’t softening his words, however, calling Apple a company with “tremendous, terrifying power” in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter promoting the film. Boyle believes artists should keep corporations like Apple in check, so to speak:
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Former Apple CEO John Sculley has told the WSJ that the Sorkin/Boyle movie Steve Jobs is “extraordinary entertainment” but depicts only one side of Jobs’ personality.
It’s extraordinary entertainment, [but] was really taking one aspect of Steve Jobs’s personality.
Part of his personality was he was a passionate perfectionist, but there were so many other parts […] The young Steve Jobs that I knew had a great sense of humor. He was on many occasions, when we were together, very warm. He cared a lot about the people he worked with and he was a good person. So, I think those aren’t the aspects that are focused on in this movie …
The WSJ reports that Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs repeatedly tried to block production of the Sorkins/Boyle movie Steve Jobs.
Ms. Jobs repeatedly tried to kill the film, according to people familiar with the conversations. She lobbied, among others, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which developed the script but passed on the movie for financial reasons, and Universal Pictures, which is releasing the $33.5 million production on Friday …
Andy Hertzfeld (R) with the actor who plays him, Michael Stuhlbarg (L)
Andy Hertzfeld, one of the key designers of the original Macintosh system software, has told Re/code that the Sorkins/Boyle movie Steve Jobs “deviates from reality everywhere” but “exposes deeper truths” about the man.
It deviates from reality everywhere — almost nothing in it is like it really happened — but ultimately that doesn’t matter that much. The purpose of the film is to entertain, inspire and move the audience, not to portray reality. It is cavalier about the facts but aspires to explore and expose the deeper truths behind Steve’s unusual personality and behavior, and it often but not always succeeds at that.
Hertzfeld said that Sorkin had convinced him that an impressionistic approach was valid …
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Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of Steve Jobs, told Wired that he had no idea how he was going to turn the huge biography into a movie, and when he finally did come up with an idea for it, he didn’t think the studio would agree.
I didn’t know that much about Steve Jobs, and the idea of doing a biopic was daunting. I work very slowly, and the first couple of months are spent just pacing around, climbing the walls […]
[Finally,] I got this idea, and I wrote an email to Scott saying, “If I had no one to answer to, I would write this entire movie in three real-time scenes, and each one would take place backstage before a particular product launch” […]
Really, I was emailing Scott to get help: Take this thing that I really want to do and tell me what I’m allowed to do, because no studio is going to let me do this. Two or three minutes later, I got an email from Amy Pascal—Scott had forwarded my email to her—and she said, “I think this is a great idea.” I couldn’t believe it. They were going to let me do this thing.
Earlier this week, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin fired shots at Apple CEO Tim Cook, who last week on Colbert called films based on the life of Steve Jobs opportunistic. “I think a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this,” Cook said. “It’s not a great part of our world.” Sorkin then shot back and said, “If you’ve got a factory full of children in China assembling phones for 17 cents an hour, you’ve got a lot of nerve calling someone else opportunistic.”
Well today, Sorkin has taken a step back and apologized for calling out Tim Cook. Speaking to E! News, Sorkin said that he probably went too far in his comments towards Tim Cook, but that Cook also went too far in his criticism of movies based on Jobs.
“You know what, I think that Tim Cook and I probably both went a little too far,” Sorkin said. “And I apologize to Tim Cook. I hope when he sees the movie, he enjoys it as much as I enjoy his products.”
Your move, Tim.
Aaron Sorkin responded to Tim Cook’s recent criticism of filmmakers who have created a number of recent Steve Jobs biopics as “opportunistic,” pushing back against the claim by highlighting Apple’s decision to manufacture its products overseas using cheap labor:
Universal today has shared the second official trailer for its upcoming Steve Jobs film. The movie debuted last week at the Telluride Film Festival and received almost universal positive reviews. Universal’s film stars Michael Fassbender as Jobs and is directed by Danny Boyle, previously behind hits such as Slumdog Millionaire.
After Steve Wozniak gave a thumbs-up to the upcoming Sorkin/Boyle biopic simply entitled Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder expanded on his comments in a lengthy interview with the BBC’s tech editor Leo Kelion.
Wozniak said that while the film didn’t always portray events in the way they really happened, it did capture the essence of its subject.
But when you see it portrayed dramatically, not the way it really happened but in a way that is emotionally graphic, it really conveys what Steve Jobs was really like inside… and what it was like to be around him.
Wozniak doesn’t, however, pull any punches when talking about Jobs’ personality …
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Steve Jobs, the Universal Pictures biopic written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, gets its debut screening tomorrow at the Telluride Film Festival. This is followed by a screening at the New York Film Festival on Oct 3rd, before its national release on 9th October.
We first saw a trailer for the movie back in May, with a longer one shown in July and a modified version shown on TV last month. A leaked screenplay draft confirmed that the movie is set around three product launches: the original Macintosh, the NeXT Cube and the iMac …
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Following the first trailers for the upcoming Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs film landing online and TV in recent weeks, Universal has now revealed the first official poster for the movie (pictured above) as star Kate Winslet shares some thoughts on her role and the film in a new interview.
In a recent interview in New York Magazine, Kate Winslet, who stars in the Danny Boyle directed film alongside Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs and supporting roles for Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels, shares some insight into how she got the role, what to expect from the film and her experience on set.
On preparing for the role and meeting the real Joanna Hoffman:
I spent a great deal of time with Joanna, and she herself has a softness to her. She came to America as a young woman and achieved a great deal. One thing that was unique about her as a figure in Steve’s life was that she didn’t need anything from him. She just needed for him to be the best version of himself. And that’s what really set their relationship apart from any relationship with all his other colleagues… She was an extraordinary, feisty Eastern European person who was pretty much the only person who could actually knock sense into Steve, and she was also kind of an emotional compass.
On what to expect from the film and Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue:
Sorkin makes it almost not about Steve Jobs at all. It’s about how that man has 100 percent dictated how we all live our lives today and how we function as people. The film is about all of us, and all of us today, not in ’84 or ’88 or ’98. I mean, look at us all — how we function. You look at a lot of toddlers today, they’ll pick up any screen of any kind, and they don’t push a button, they swipe. It’s horrifying but kind of extraordinary, and that is Steve Jobs…
The film is currently scheduled for release this October.
You can read more from the full interview online here and check out the recent TV trailer here.
Attendees of the 53rd New York Film Festival in October will be treated to an early screening of Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming ‘Steve Jobs’ biopic. While the Hollywood version of Steve Jobs biography is set to debut in theaters on October 9th, the NYFF announced today that it will screen the film to attendees on October 3rd:
We are pleased to announce that Steve Jobs, written by Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War) and directed by Academy Award winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), has been selected as the Centerpiece for the 53rd New York Film Festival. The film will screen for audiences on October 3.
The film, which is based on the authorized Walter Isaacson-written biography of the late Apple co-founder, stars Michael Fassbender in the lead role with Seth Rogen portraying Steve Wozniak. Universal has shared both a teaser video and an in-depth trailer for the movie ahead of its early October premier.
