Ashton Kutcher’s ‘Jobs’ biopic is a box office flop

Open Road Films Q&A for JOBS Release

The Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher as Apple’s legendary co-founder Steve Jobs has opened with disappointing revenues and bombed at the box office this weekend. Specifically, the flick pulled in just shy of seven million dollars domestically, earning it the seventh place at the box office. This is one of Kutcher’s lowest openings ever and hardly a success knowing the figure fell short of the $8-9 million distributor Open Road Films was hoping to rake in.

And as if mixed reviews weren’t enough, the movie has failed to impress the trusted review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes which gave it a rating of just 25 percent…

Jobs hit 2,381 screens across the United States this weekend and took in an estimated $6.7 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

That’s less than one-third as much as the Social Network, another biopic (sort of) focused on depicting the difficulties co-founder Mark Zuckerberg faced building Facebook and how the social networking giant came to be.

According to Box Office Mojo:

Jobs had plenty of issues, including awful reviews and a comedy star playing dramatic (almost never a good idea).

Most important, though, was the movie’s apparent tonal issues: while plenty of people enjoy their Apple products, the deification of Steve Jobs is a bit of a turn off. Jobs received a weak “B-” CinemaScore, and all indications are that it will disappear from theaters quickly.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Jobs had a rating at post of just 25 percent “fresh”.

It didn’t help that early Apple employees Daniel Kottke and Bill Fernandez blasted the movie’s inaccuracies for the sake of dramatic appeal. Here’s Apple’s other co-founder, Steve Wozniak, slamming the flick in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

“I wasn’t entertained by Kutcher’s Jobs movie,” he quipped.

It’s worth noting that Woz is being paid by another movie studio to help support their upcoming Steve Jobs film, but he insists that “my principles aren’t affected by the money”.

Woz also trash-talked the movie in a Gizmodo interview.

Cody went to see Jobs and was only half-impressed: he praised Kutcher’s acting in terms of the look, the mannerisms and the walk of Steve Jobs, but had issues with the voice (“I kept hearing Kelso from That 70′s Show telling me to ‘think different'”).

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but don’t necessarily think it files as a flop.

The nearly $7 million in opening weekend revenue – though short of distributors’ expectations – isn’t that bad given the movie’s production budget was just over $12 million.

Have you seen the movie yet?

If so, did you like it?