Steve Jobs Biopic Has Best Opening Weekend of the Year

The eagerly-anticipated biopic of Apple founder Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender, has recorded the best U.S. opening weekend of 2015, grossing more than $500,000 after showings at just four theaters, Vanity Fair reported.

The film—which has been described by current Apple chief executive Tim Cook as "opportunistic"—ran at a handful of theaters in New York and Los Angeles between October 9-11, achieving a per-theater average (PTA) of more than $130,000.

Previously, the highest PTA of the year was held by crime thriller Sicario, which grossed more than $67,000 PTA in its opening weekend. Steve Jobs, which is directed by British filmmaker Danny Boyle and stars Fassbender in the title role, nearly doubled Sicario's takings making $521,522 in total. According to U.S. culture site Deadline, the film's PTA puts it in the top 15 of all-time best opening weekends.

In 2014, only four films grossed more than $100,000 PTA in their opening weekends—Wes Anderson's kooky comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel, Alejandro González Iñárritu's cinematographic masterpiece Birdman, Morten Tyldum's British wartime thriller The Imitation Game and Clint Eastwood's biographical drama American Sniper. All four went on to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture, with Birdman eventually coming out triumphant. Steve Jobs fell behind only The Grand Budapest Hotel ($202,000 PTA) and American Sniper ($158,000 PTA) in terms of PTAs.

The biopic will be shown at more than 60 theatres on the weekend beginning October 16 before opening across the U.S. on October 23. It will be released in the U.K. on November 13.

According to tech news site CNET, the film focuses on several key stages in Jobs' career, including the launch of the first Macintosh computer in 1984 and the iMac reveal in 1998. It has generated some controversy among those close to Jobs, who died from cancer in 2011. The Wall Street Journal reported that the technology guru's widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, lobbied both Sony Pictures Entertainment—who prepared the script but ultimately did not produce the film for financial reasons—and the film's production company, Universal Pictures, to kill the film as it presented an unfavorable depiction of Jobs.

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Conor is a staff writer for Newsweek covering Africa, with a focus on Nigeria, security and conflict.

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