Steve Jobs, the film: two movie studios seek the definitive portrayal

Though the filmmaker was never able to close a deal to direct the adaptation (Danny Boyle will now take on the movie over at Universal, with Prometheus star Michael Fassbender reportedly playing the title role), in a February email he was beyond enthusiastic:

From: David Fincher
To: Amy Pascal, Scott Rudin (Personal), Mike De Luca
Cc: Aaron Sorkin
Sent: Feb 23, 2014 3:34 PM
Subject: JOBS

Is great. It’s a play, but a really quicksilver, cinematic one.
I would think you would want to cast and rehearse very carefully (couple months)
Shoot very quickly (4 or 5 weeks — 8 days per ACT??)
The venues would be easy (we could probably find them all in town)
Editing is where we would spend time.
Can SONY market a ONE MAN SHOW(?)
Can you guys make the LENNY of it all, the MUST SEE?The latter is a reference to Lenny, Bob Fosse's 1974 biopic about comedian Lenny Bruce that starred Dustin Hoffman and was adapted from the stage play of the same name.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak sat down with Bloomberg this week to discuss his thoughts on innovation, Larry Ellison, and, most extensively, Jobs — the recently released biopic about Steve Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher. Wozniak attended a midnight premiere of the film, and apparently didn't leave with a very good impression.

"There were a lot of things wrong," he said in a televised interview Friday. According to Wozniak, the movie inaccurately glorified Jobs without acknowledging his flaws as a young entrepreneur, and without giving due credit to other people involved in the company's early days. "I didn't like seeing a lot of people I know not get the respect they deserve," he added.

Early impressions of the Ashton Kutcher-led Jobs were decidedly mixed, but you'll soon get an opportunity to judge the Steve Jobs biopic for yourself. According to Deadline, Open Road Films has announced that Jobs will open nationwide on Friday, August 16th — a release date that comes about four months after the film was originally slated to open. This official announcement comes after The Wrap received info from its sources pointing to the August 16th release last night. Back in March, Open Road announced that Jobs would miss its planned April 19th release because the company wasn't able to create enough "buzz" around the film. With a new release date on the books, we'll presumably be subjected to a media campaign to create that all-important buzz — and as the first major biopic (Funny or Die's iSteve doesn't quite make the cut) to be released since Jobs' death, it should be able to get a good deal of attention. While there's no doubt the film has its flaws, we're still looking forward to hearing what the public thinks of Kutcher's feverish take on Apple's former CEO.

If you want to watch a film about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, you'll have plenty of options before long: You could track down the aging Pirates of Silicon Valley, or wait for the Aaron Sorkin film based on Walter Issacson's authorized biography. You could hope that Ashton Kutcher's jOBS gets a release date. Or, you could watch Funny or Die's iSteve, an 80-minute parody starring Justin Long, who once portrayed the Mac in Apple's famous Mac vs. PC commercials. Jorge Garcia (Lost, Once Upon A Time) plays his partner Steve Wozniak. It's free to stream right now at our source link below.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hasn't been mincing words with the new JOBS biopic, which debuted at Sundance Film Festival last night. We reached out to Woz with descriptions of key scenes we saw and some quotes from his character (played by Josh Gad) to see if he had other thoughts. We've heard from others that Woz did not have any contribution to the Kutcher-helmed film, but that isn't the entire story.

This movie was reviewed at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Cupertino, 1980. Steve Jobs is giving an impassioned motivational speech to a small team working on Apple’s Lisa. "It’s social status. It’s social currency," he says. His voice is deliberate, paced to emphasize the most emotionally-driven words. On the whiteboard behind him it reads "File | Edit | Page Layout | Format." He asks the team how many typefaces are in Lisa, who in turn respond that it was deemed a less pressing issue. This isn’t the answer Jobs expected.

We know Ashton Kutcher looks the part of a young Steve Jobs, but how well can the actor portray the late Apple co-founder on the big screen? The first clip we've seen from jOBS (courtesy of Entertainment Weekly) provides some indication of what moviegoers can expect when the film opens nationwide April 19th.

In a minute-long segment set in Hewlett Packard's parking garage, we find Jobs in the midst of an intense conversation with Steve Wozniak (actor Josh Gad) as he attempts to convince Woz that his "profound" operating system invention could revolutionize computing. "You can see what you're working on while you're working on it," he says, astonished with a concept that Wozniak largely seems to be brushing off. "This is freedom to create and to do and to build as artists and individuals," he insists. Woz, still dismissive, retorts "nobody wants to buy a computer." Yet Apple would ultimately pursue the idea with the Apple I, and by now you're familiar with where the story goes from there. jOBS will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival, and our own Ross Miller will be on hand to bring you impressions of the film.

We've seen plenty of images of Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs in the forthcoming jOBS biopic, but we haven't yet seen him alongside Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, until now. USA Today just published a few photos showing Kutcher alongside Josh Gad, who will be playing the role of the more technically-minded half of the pair. We've matched USA Today's photo (on the right) with one that appears to be from a similar time period above. While we've found Kutcher's resemblance to Jobs to be quite uncanny, Gad doesn't quite hit the mark as well, though there's definitely some resemblance. Hopefully Gad's acting chops will be sufficient to complete the picture for movie-goers.

We're only a few weeks away from the film's January 26th premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, at which point we should hear plenty more about how Gad manages to pull off Woz. For his part, Gad also finds the Kutcher / Jobs resemblance to be a bit of a shocker. "There is an eerie resemblance - he didn't have to do much to get there,'' Gad told USA Today. "When he showed up, it sent a ripple of shock throughout the set."

jOBS, the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, will arrive in theaters this April. The film, which is said to cover Steve Jobs' life from 1971 to 2000, will first debut on the closing night of the Sundance Film Festival later this month before seeing a wider release this spring — just about one year after we first heard tell of the film. There isn't much more in the way of details about the Joshua Michael Stern-directed movie, but the press release did indicate that the film's team had "unprecedented access" during shooting to the garage that Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked in while first getting Apple Computer off the ground in the 70s. While jOBS will be the first Steve Jobs film to be released following the Apple founder's death, it remains to be seen if it'll be the definitive portrayal — writer Aaron Sorkin (of The Social Network and TV's The West Wing) is hard at work at his own Steve Jobs film.

This coming January is likely to be the first time that anyone outside of a production facility will get a look at jOBS, the new biopic of Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher. The movie, which was initially announced in April of this year, covers 30 years of Jobs' life from 1971 to 2000 as an entrepreneur and leader of such companies as Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. It also stars Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, and Matthew Modine.

The movie is not based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, released shortly after Jobs' death last fall. A separate film that is based on Isaacson's book is also in the works, and is being written by famed screenplay author Aaron Sorkin.

Aaron Sorkin has thus far said relatively little about the Steve Jobs biopic he's writing for Sony Pictures. But the acclaimed screenwriter finally let some details slip today at The Hero Summit, an event presented by Newsweek and The Daily Beast. During an interview, Sorkin revealed that the movie will be comprised of three, 30-minute sections that each take place backstage in the moments immediately preceding some of Jobs' most iconic keynotes.

"This entire movie is going to be three scenes and three scenes only that all take place in realtime," Sorkin said. "A half hour for you in the audience is the same as a half hour to a character on the screen." The three presentations that will serve as backdrops in the film will be the original Macintosh, the debut of NeXT, and the first-ever iPod reveal in 2001. That covers a decent chunk of Jobs' career, though it also omits many of Apple's later accomplishments including the iPhone and iPad. Still, Sorkin says he chose the timeframe intentionally, with the classic "Think Different" commercial serving as a potential end point for the film.

As the Ashton Kutcher film jOBS prepares to start filming, we're seeing some more information about the other actors. Entertainment Weekly has reported that Matthew Modine, best known as Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, will be taking the role of John Sculley, the one-time Apple CEO who clashed with Steve Jobs and was eventually replaced by him as company head. Modine looks appropriately craggy for Sculley, who's shown above in the early 1990s. Broadway's Josh Gad, meanwhile, will be taking the role of Steve Wozniak. Gad, also a solid fit visually, was most recently in the Broadway production Book of Mormon, and he's previously showed up as a correspondent on The Daily Show. The confusingly-capitalized jOBS is expected to be released this fall, well ahead of Aaron Sorkin's separate Jobs biopic.

It seems like the two upcoming films about Steve Jobs are already engaged in a public relations duel. Earlier this week, Sony Pictures' big-budget production announced that it had signed Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as technical advisor and The Social Network's Aaron Sorkin as screenwriter, and now the rival Ashton Kutcher production has announced that it will film scenes in the actual Los Altos, California home where Steve Jobs lived, and the garage where Apple began its work (pictured above). The film, previously titled Jobs: Get Inspired, now appears to be going by the name jOBS, and it's now set to start filming in June for a release late this fall.

Earlier this week Sony announced that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin would be adapting Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs into a feature film, and the scribe has already revealed additional details about the project — including the involvement of Steve Wozniak. During a recent news conference Sorkin told Reuters that Woz — who co-founded Apple with Jobs in 1976 — had been hired by the studio to serve as a "tutor" on the project, providing technical insight as well as consulting on Jobs himself. Sorkin also stated that he hadn't yet figured out just how he was going to tackle the project. "I know so little about what I am going to write," Sorkin reportedly said. "It can't be a straight-ahead biography because it's very difficult to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biography." The writer did something similar in his Oscar-winning screenplay for The Social Network, which utilized a decidedly nonlinear approach, jumping between the early days of Facebook's creation and a lawsuit Mark Zuckerberg was embroiled in years later.

"Drama is tension versus obstacle. Someone wants something, something is standing in their way of getting it," Sorkin reportedly said. "And I need to find that event and I will." Sorkin is currently in the middle of preparing The Newsroom, which will premiere on HBO this June. Once the show has made its debut, he'll be turning his attention to the Jobs biography.

Ashton Kutcher may have been spotted trying on Steve Jobs' signature outfit recently for a film, but Sony Pictures is putting together a major studio adaptation of the Apple co-founder's life and it just landed a huge name: screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. He will be adapting Walter Isaacson's best-selling authorized biography, the studio announced today, and there's little doubt Sorkin has the chops. Not only did he pen the adaption of David Fincher's The Social Network, but Sorkin's also the man behind shows such as The West Wing, Sports Night, and the upcoming HBO series The Newsroom. Jobs and Sorkin actually knew each other personally, with Jobs reaching out to the writer some years ago about writing a Pixar film; Sorkin declined.

The studio optioned Isaacson's book last year at a cost of $1 million, just days after Jobs passed away. It had been rumored to be in pursuit of Sorkin ever since. With the deal finally in place, we won't deny that we're excited to see such a high-profile project get the A-list attention it deserves. In connection with the announcement, Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-Chairman Amy Pascal stated that "Steve Jobs' story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we're confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing."

TMZ has published a series of photos of Ashton Kutcher taken yesterday in Los Angeles. As you can see, Kutcher is dressed in Steve Jobs' famous black turtleneck and blue jeans combo, which the CEO wore in most public appearances starting in the 1990s. Kutcher was apparently on his way to the set of the Steve Jobs biopic he is starring in, which is tentatively titled, Jobs: Get Inspired. This film is one of two projects currently being worked on about the Apple leader, the other being a Sony production based on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, which was released late last year.

We've got a few more details on the recently-revealed Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher, thanks to a Neowin interview with the producer, Mark Hulme. The independent film — which has the unfortunate working title of Jobs: Get Inspired — will cover the late CEO's life from 1971 to 2000, putting it rather squarely into the time period that the TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley explored. The first-time producer said that, unsurprisingly, they chose Kutcher to play the role of Jobs because of his likeness to the Apple co-founder, especially during the timeframe that the movie will cover. There are few other details, but Hulme says that they will begin filming next month with plans for a Q4 release, and he's not concerned about Sony's own Jobs biopic — which will be at least in part based on Walter Isaacson's recent biography — because it isn't slated to be released for another year or two.

A Steve Jobs movie was an absolute inevitability, but what we didn't count on was Ashton Kutcher landing the starring role. According to Variety, however, the Two and a Half Men star will indeed take on the role of Cupertino's finest in the upcoming indie film simply known as Jobs. The movie will be directed by Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote), with a script written by Matt Whiteley. It's not clear yet how much of Jobs' life this movie will cover; Variety says that the film will follow Jobs "from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple," which makes us think that we'll see more of Jobs' earlier years.

While the timing of this announcement certainly gave us pause, Variety reporter Jeff Sneider has vouched for the veracity of this story on his Twitter feed, saying "do you REALLY think the top Variety brass & my editors would let me post an APRIL FOOL'S DAY joke on the homepage?" He also noted that this scoop will be on the cover of tomorrow's Variety, and we haven't seen any other April fool's jokes out of Variety either today or in the past, so for the time being we're going to believe that this story is true.