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Tech

The ‘Steve Jobs’ Movie Bombed at the Box Office

The much-hyped biopic only brought in half as much as was expected this weekend.
Rachel Pick
New York, US
Image: Universal Pictures

Despite pulling a screenwriter, a director and several lead actors all pretty much at the top of their game, Steve Jobs made only half as much money as it was predicted to make over its opening weekend. Its $7.3 million take put it in seventh place in the box office, behind Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter.

Why such a dismal turnout for a biopic about a man so synonymous with genius and innovation?

Variety says the film was "too brainy" and "too cold" to resonate with audiences. Jobs biographer Rick Tetzeli says the film doesn't teach you "anything new or significant" about the wizard of Silicon Valley. More than that, Tetzeli takes issue with how fast and loose screenwriter Aaron Sorkin played with the facts of Jobs' life: namely, the timeline of Jobs' family drama. The film's emotional center is Jobs' relationship with his daughter Lisa, whom he initially denied fathering. The film shows them reconciling in 1998—by which point, Tetzeli writes, Jobs had already had three other children, welcomed Lisa into his life, and was a much happier and balanced family man.

Sorkin openly admitted to arranging and altering Jobs' story to make for a more compelling narrative, saying he never wanted to make a straightforward biopic. But as Tetzeli points out, Jobs has been dead only four years. To twist the facts so much seems disrespectful.

And Tetzeli says Sorkin's Steve Jobs is less compelling than the real man, without real-life Jobs' capacity to learn from his mistakes. "The real man was a real man. He was complicated, and therefore could be mean, pig-headed, and wrong even on his best days," Tetzeli writes. "But he only became truly great because he was able to learn, grow, harness his strengths, and mitigate his weaknesses. Sorkin's vision doesn't capture any of this."