While production only just got underway on director Danny Boyle’s biopic Steve Jobs, Universal Pictures is feeling bullish on the production and has staked out a release date that’s only nine months away. The studio announced today that the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Steve Jobs movie will open in theaters on October 9th of this year, putting the picture in line for a strong awards season start. Moreover, the early October date makes me think Universal might first unveil the film at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, or Venice Film Festival in September.
The October 9th date is quite a nice fit for the film, as its main competition that weekend is the comedy sequel/reboot Vacation, the Coast Guard thriller The Finest Hours, and a Relativity thriller called Kidnap. Of course it’s also opening one week before a new film from Steve Spielberg, a spy thriller starring Tom Hanks, and one week after Robert Zemeckis’ 3D picture The Walk, so the beginning of October seems to be chock-full of meaty dramas.
Getting Steve Jobs off the ground hasn’t been easy, as the project spent a couple of years at Sony and went through a number of different actors for the lead role before Michael Fassbender accepted the challenge. It’s a uniquely structured film, with the crux of the movie taking place backstage at three iconic product launches, ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac.
While it’s way too early to talk about the film’s Oscar prospects with any degree of certainty (it is still filming after all), it’s impossible to ignore the fact that both Boyle and Sorkin are Oscar winners, and Fassbender is a recent nominee who now gets the chance to shine with a project wholly centered around his character. Expectations are gonna be quite high for this one.
The supporting cast of Steve Jobs isn’t too shabby either, as Fassbender is joined by Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, and Michael Stuhlbarg.