Danny Boyle Refers to 'Steve Jobs' Wide Release Plan as 'Arrogant'

[vilms101]

Your first portion, about the different between how everyone already knows a good deal about Jobs, but few knew about Zuckerberg, is a great point.

I just wanted to point out that the movie only covers from 1984 - 1998. The movie came out 17 years after the story it's telling ended. There's been plenty of time for reflection on this story. I don't think movies made in 10, 20 years will be able to do this better.

You nailed it right here. The reason the Social Network did so well was because it dealt with recent subject matter. It came out in 2010 at the height of Facebook's popularity and everyone was interested in learning about its origins and Mark Zuckerberg.

Conversely, Steve Jobs was released in 2015 and focuses on storylines from twenty and thirty years ago. I think it's reasonable to assume that your average Apple fan came on board initially with the iPod and then many more through the iPhone. But those products aren't given any focus so it's no wonder that today's Apple fan didn't flock to see it. If the movie had been about the behind-the-scenes work done on the iPhone, I bet it would've done exceptionally well.

 

[freediverx]

Historical inaccuracies aside, the Jobs film just wasn't all that interesting. And this is coming from someone who's a huge fan of both Sorkin's and Boyle's previous work. They had so much potentially great material to work with, a brilliant screenwriter, director, and actors. But they chose to make a rather boring, drawn out movie about a father's relationship with his daughter. Yaaaawn. No wonder it bombed.

 

[BornAgainMac]

When I watched the movie, I was so excited to see the keynote for the original Mac and the NeXT presentations and the movie just switched to the next event. By the time the iMac presentation was going to start, I already knew it wasn't going to be shown and was already disappointed. I am ok with he back stage stuff but I would have been happy to see a few minutes of each keynote.

 

[0007776]

I don't think moving it to wide release more slowly would have made it do any better. Most of the people who wanted to see it initially either saw it in the first few theaters it was in or lost interest. Their best bet for a release strategy that might have worked was a wide release on the first weekend so then people who had a little bit of interest might have gone to see it instead of hearing about it first and changing their minds.

 

[bergert]

A release schedule can turn a bad movie into a good one ?

The only reason that movie (entertainment) sales are rising is that as free time (willful or forced) is increasing; movie sales are increasing. The quality being offered is declining.

 

[Solomani]

The Ashton Kutcher movie probably fared better. Hehe.

 

[C DM]

A release schedule can turn a bad movie into a good one ?

The only reason that movie (entertainment) sales are rising is that as free time (willful or forced) is increasing; movie sales are increasing. The quality being offered is declining.

Quite a few different and often not so straightforward things can have different effects. Hard to rule something out.

 

[66318]

Do all the movies use this sort of release strategy? I have no idea. I usually assumed movies comes out in majority of the movie theaters all at once (besides the selected previews, but those are not public release).

It depends on the type. Films that are more in the art category over pure entertainment movies tend to go through a series of limited releases. Sometimes a screen at a time, where the directors are present to gauge reception. Tweaks to the movie may still happen, along with new trailers created. Sometimes they end up skipping the general theater route and hit direct to home markets. Others will do the direct to home route as a way to fund a theatrical release.

All has to do with what funding model the director went with, and if they were seeking a wide release, or a very targeted niche film.

 

[milo]

When the studio treats a release like an art film, audiences will treat it like an art film.

A few other movies have tried this sort of release recently and for any movie aspiring to be a mainstream hit, seems like it doesn't really work. Look at The Walk and Everest.

 

[naeS1Sean]

So what?

That response doesn't make sense with what he said...

 

[Gasu E.]

A good strategy would be to add zombies and explosions. And some boobs too.

I believe I saw all three in the trailer.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

When are they doing a sequel?

 

[cmwade77]

Umm, it also could be that it was Rated R and there are many people that would see a film like this, but won't go to an R rated film.

 

[Mystic386]

Danny Boyle is the definition of 'arrogant'.

Arrogant is perhaps not the right word. What Boyle has said is ripe for a good cartoon / comic strip.

I think it's more "Arrogant, self important and ignorant".

Panning success for your own work because on reflection the release strategy was faulty makes Boyle look like a ****. From the statement it's clear Boyle supported and was party to the release strategy.

Sometimes when something is a turkey, no amount of make up, smoke and mirrors or dressing it up, will disguise the fact that Danny Boyle failed. We all have our duds. Dude, own it, accept it, and move on. Right now Boyle is busy thrashing a dead horse hoping it will get up, suck in some oxygen and bolt to the Oscar finish line.

I guess for Boyle there is no harm in populating the media with why it's someone else's fault or a strategy fault. Anything to help explain it away so he can get to his next movie. It surprises me that Boyle didn't have the sense to realise he was making a dog of a movie.

Given the amount of misrepresentation in the movie I am happy to see the thing tank. Also hopefully Hollywood will spare us a myriad of other movies on Twitter, Instagram etc. 4Chan or Reddit could be interes... no, please. No more. We all know Hollywood. Something works well (The Social Network), they deem the category a winner and flog it to death.

And to the Danny Boyle fans, please don't be offended by this comment. In think we can safely say Boyle created a lemon. It's just reality. Hopefully his next will be a masterpiece. I don't know Boyle's work and therefore not a raving fan. I have my own pain though. I am a huge Fassbender fan and I wonder if he would have been better to join the other actors and pass. Clearly a bunch of people read the script and knew to steer clear.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Umm, it also could be that it was Rated R and there are many people that would see a film like this, but won't go to an R rated film.

I didn't even realize it was rated R... it was a pretty benign film - what on earth did it get the R for?

Edit: Wow. What the hell? It got an R for 36 swears, kissing, and drinking alcohol.

Meanwhile, it got a G in Canada. Most of the world gave it a rating equivalent to a US PG-13.

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

I didn't even realize it was rated R... it was a pretty benign film - what on earth did it get the R for?

To be honest, I saw it and barely remember it -- could the R rating have been for language?

 

[budselectjr]

It was good. I didn't care what Tim Cook or Laurene Powell Jobs thought about it.

 

[calisurfboy]

I use my refrigerator on a daily basis as well as my dish washer but it doesn't mean I want to see a movie about the individuals who invented them. A movie about Steve Jobs does not sound interesting especially since it has already been done several times in the past.

 

[LorenK]

I think that it is one of the best movies of the year. Forget for an instant the subject of the movie and assume that you knew nothing about the man, as a character study it was great. Regardless of what the family and those around him thought, the piece was impressionistic and there are enough stories of Steve Jobs to make the movie a plausible interpretation, and above all, a movie about emotional growth.

Now that being said, it was also not a movie, given the hype, that would have gotten a wide audience, and should have been given time to build an audience, because from this moviegoer, I thought that it was an excellent piece of movie making.

 

[H2SO4]

The difference is that the general public had no idea who Mark Zuckerberg was, or how Facebook came to be, and nobody else was telling that story. So Social Network was fresh, interesting. The general public thinks they know who Steve Jobs is (lots of different views, but pretty much everyone has one) and between the book, the other picture, and all the coverage from his death, it's a story often told.

Then it didn't help that there was controversy about the truthfulness of the movie, both of details and of character. So it was a movie about stuff we know, and they made stuff up. Of course it tanked.

In 10, 20 years, a great and successful Steve Jobs movie can be made. Give it some perspective of time, and let the story fade in the mind's of the public. Now, it was a foolish decision to make it and I'm not surprised it and the other one didn't do well.

I disagree. If it was an interesting film about an interesting person it would have sold. In 20 years that will not change. A great film with wide appeal and great first reviews would likely continue to sell.
We all love Apple products, I buy and will very likely continue to buy plenty but the company and its founder are just not that interesting to the general populous. That’s a fact.
It’s like Alex Ferguson - some see him as a genius too and he made Manchester United a worldwide name but a film about him whenever made would probably not have wide appeal outside of football.

 

[Kenneth Stillman]

Following an initial wave of laudatory reviews at a few film festivals in September, the new Steve Jobs movie earned only 7th-place during its debut box office weekend. The film's director, Danny Boyle, has given a reason behind its poor performance, calling the release strategy "arrogant" during a fundraising event for the annual Shuffle Festival in London (via Business Insider).

"We were arrogant to release it very wide, very quickly," the director said over the weekend. His remark refers to the somewhat hazy rollout plan for the film, which saw it premiere in just New York and Los Angeles on October 9 -- where it made a small, but impressive mark -- before going wide on October 23 and subsequently failing to impress. The initial longer-term plan for the movie saw a few more weeks of time spent rolling out to more select venues across the country, generating positive word of mouth, before expanding to a wide release closer to the end of the year and poised closer to the Oscar season.

The film's opening weekend predictions were estimated to be between $15 and $19 million, but Steve Jobs made just $7.3 million in its debut three-day weekend, gaining it the 7th-place slot at the box office. Boyle was noted as voicing hope for Apple's massive fanbase to create an event around the film, but after disappointing the first weekend, the studio decided to pull it from over 2,000 theaters across the United States, leaving the movie in about 300 theaters in total.

Article Link: Danny Boyle Refers to 'Steve Jobs' Wide Release Plan as 'Arrogant'

 

[Kenneth Stillman]

The problem isn't with the rollout. The problem was that the movie sucked. I'm a huge Apple/Steve Jobs fan and I even read his biography recently, and this movie did nothing but disappoint.

True fans would have liked to have had a biography picture. Instead we got a play, set around 3 product launches, with conversations that never happened, with people who never attended the product launches, which just rattled off random facts about Steve's life. It was Steve talking with 5 people in his life - about his life. They had a few flashbacks, but not really enough to give us any insight. The whole thing could have just been 5 computer history experts just sitting around a dinner table and discussing Steve and it would have been just as good.

Somebody show Aaron Sorkin The Pirates movie and have him rewrite it and try it again.

 

[jimsowden]

Ya, it was all about the way they rolled out the film, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that it wasn't even close to factually accurate, that his wife asked everyone to boycott it, or that people who knew him said that this was nothing like the man he knew.

Correct.

For the people who are currently enjoying Mocking Jay Pt. II and The Good Dinosaur, those things do not matter. It does matter they didn't hear enough good things about Jobs to justify going to a dialogue driven nerdfest on movie night with the wife.

 

[Pock]

Probably on my own here but I really enjoyed the film. Very well made and had a great feel to it. Loved the ending too.

Yes I've read the book.

 

[kas23]

It's mainly people who knew him more recently who've spoken out against it, some without (at their own admission) ever even having seen the movie.

Basically anyone who has a large financial steak in Apple, through sales (Cook) or stock prices (Jobs's wife), spoke out against it. I don't recall anyone far removed from Apple complaining about it.