When Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, the rights to his life story were swept up quickly to become a major motion picture at Sony.
It took a while to get him to commit, but Aaron Sorkin finally came aboard to write the script, and that’s pretty much the last we’ve heard of the Sony biopic for now.
Another rival Jobs biopic, this one starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs, quickly went into production, and the film, which is entitled jOBS, premiered this year at Sundance. The movie didn’t get horrible reviews, but the notices have been fairly mediocre, and Steve Wozniak especially wasn’t thrilled, telling Good Morning America, “I think [Jobs] would have been a little offended and embarrassed by it just like myself. I think he would say that was, you know, a bit too phony.”
Now jOBS has hit another set back, with the film being pulled from its April 19 release date, and being as Vulture put it, “postponed indefinitely.” (The release date was meant to coincide on the 37th anniversary of Apple.) Reports are claiming that the studio releasing jOBS, Open Road, wants more time to market the film, which sounds a little fishy to us, but at the same time, with the movie a month away from release, how many of us even remember it was coming out?
Again, the reviews on jOBS were middling, but jOBS certainly doesn’t have bad buzz by a longshot. So it’s hard to discern what’s really going on with this at the moment. There’s no current release date for jOBS, but perhaps the announcement of one is just around the corner, who knows?
The Wrap even wrote a piece saying that the “marketing problems” with jOBS “could turn into a blessing at the box office.” jOBS was slated to come out the same day as the new Tom Cruise sci-fi epic Oblivion, and as one analyst said, “That would have been like an iMac going up against a Commodore 64.”
Then again, jOBS was made for a very low budget, $8.5 million, which means it would be pretty tough to lose money on it, especially with all the secondary markets. (The film could probably make its money back on Bluray, VOD and foreign alone.) We’re willing to bet a new release date will be set up soon, and as soon as we know anything, you’ll read it here on TG.
