If a Danny Boyle-directed Aaron Sorkin-penned film about an abrasive, eccentric, and massively popular business icon doesn’t sound like a hit to you … you’re smarter than we are. You’re also smarter than Universal, which just pulled its highly-anticipated Steve Jobs biopic from more than 2,000 movie theaters.
Collider reports that — despite the film receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews and even a bit of Oscar buzz — it has earned just $16.7 million against a production budget of $30 million and is being pulled out of a huge swath of cinemas.
Set backstage during the launch of three separate, iconic Apple products, the film’s approach was perhaps a bit too arthouse for mainstream audiences and didn’t resonate with as many theatergoers as Universal thought it would. By all accounts, both Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs) and co-star Kate Winslet (Joanna Hoffman) shine, but evidently, not quite bright enough to save this film from the scrap heap.
In fact, THR points out that Steve Jobs is scarcely outperforming the 2013 indie biopic Jobs, in which Ashton Kutcher portrayed the tech magnate. This despite the fact that the latter received very poor reviews and lacked the backing of a major Hollywood studio.
These are the sort of failures that studio execs have in mind when they decide to reboot a comic book franchise for the umpteenth time, but with riskier propositions continuing to crash and burn, it’s getting harder and harder to blame them.
Given the glowing reviews it received from critics, it’s still possible that Steve Jobs could puts its stamp on the upcoming awards season, but history has shown that, as these films fade out of sight, they also fade out of award committees’ minds.
We’ll see soon enough, but if you were looking to catch Steve Jobs on the big screen, act fast. You may be running out of time.
