Following mostly poor reviews, as well as a thumbs-down from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, JOBS has apparently had a less-than-stellar opening weekend in the US.
The much-anticipated Steve Jobs biopic, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and starring Ashton Kutcher, took $6.7 million over the weekend, falling short of the $8 to $9 million distributor Open Road Films had reportedly been expecting.
In a report Sunday, Forbes suggested takings at US theaters “probably won’t get much higher than $20 million,” though added that the movie’s low production cost ($12 million) means its creators will, over time, make its money back, helped by the fact that “it runs forever on the likes of TNT and FX.”
Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers described JOBS as “a decidedly mixed bag” though called Kutcher’s performance “quietly dazzling”. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times was more direct, saying “it would drive Steve Jobs nuts to know that the new movie about his life has all the sex appeal of a PowerPoint presentation,” while DT’s Micah Abrams suggests Steve Jobs would have fired Stern and first-time screenwriter Matt Whiteley for taking “as conventional and safe a path as possible.”
Wozniak
Even Steve Wozniak, played in the movie by Josh Gad, was measured in his praise, calling the acting merely “good”.
“I was attentive and entertained but not greatly enough to recommend the movie,” Wozniak said in a Gizmodo discussion on JOBS.
While many fans of the late Apple boss will no doubt set some time aside to check out the biopic, they’ll also be keen to see what Aaron Sorkin comes up with with his adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Jobs.
Lauded and awarded for his The Social Network screenplay about the early days of Facebook, Sorkin’s Steve Jobs script will reportedly consist of three scenes set backstage before the unveiling of the original Mac, NeXT, and iPod. Anyone wanting to see it will have to be patient though, as the release of the movie is still some time away.
