The first of what will be at least two Steve Jobs biopics to show in the coming years now has a release date. jOBS, which hits Australian theaters tomorrow and is already out in Hong Kong and France, will be released nationwide on August 16th. The film stars Ashton Kutcher as famed founder of Apple, and will follow Jobs’s life over the thirty year period of 1971 to 2001.
jOBS screened at Sundance this past year and was originally slated for an April release before distributor Open Road determined that would not be enough time to market the film. James Woods (Officer Down, Hercules), Amanda Crew (Charlie St. Cloud), Dermot Mulroney (The Grey), and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man, Juno) co-star, and Joshua Michael Stern (Neverwas, Swing Vote) directed.
As we mentioned, this is just the first Steve Jobs biopic in the pipeline. Sony is developing a film of its own written by West Wing/The Social Network scribe Aaron Sorkin and based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling book Steve Jobs. Sony snapped up the rights to the book in 2011, very close to Jobs’s death. Though Kutcher’s star power can’t be ignored, there will certainly be tangible differences between this picture and the upcoming studio effort, but one can’t help but wonder what effect jOBS will have on any Steve Jobs movies that come after it. Of course, there’s no word yet on exactly where the Sorkin project will focus, so it’s entirely possible the two films will be placed very differently. Unlikely, but possible.
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