Steve Jobs’ widow tried to kill new biopic that Apple fears will be too harsh

The new Steve Jobs biopic opens Friday despite the Apple cofounder’s inner circle making every attempt to derail it.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, “repeatedly tried to kill the film.” The WSJ reports that she pressed Sony Pictures Entertainment, which originally backed the film, and then Universal Pictures, which now owns the rights.

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Longtime Apple board member and Jobs’ friend, Bill Campbell, also criticized the film, as did Apple chief executive Tim Cook, in an appearance on a late-night talk show.

None of these folks has seen the movie, of course. According to the WSJ, the producers of the film sought Jobs’ widow’s input, but she turned them down.

As we noted over the summer, the film will likely be Apple’s worst nightmare in terms of its depiction of the much-revered Jobs.

One problem is that the move is based on the immensely popular, but highly critical, biography by Walter Isaacson that Jobs enlisted him to write. Over the past year, Apple insiders have made their objections to the book abundantly clear.

The WSJ quotes an email from producer Scott Rudin in which he says that Laurene Jobs “continued to say how much she disliked the book, and that any movie based on the book could not possibly be accurate.”

It probably doesn’t help that the script was written by Aaron Sorkin, who gleefully twisted the backstory of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg a few years ago when he penned the script for The Social Network.

Director Danny Boyle didn’t allay anyone’s fears when he told the WSJ that the movie is intended to be “impressionistic.”

“The truth is not necessarily in the facts, it’s in the feel,” Boyle told the WSJ, implying exactly what Jobs’s supporters fear most: A fact-free film that hammers on Jobs’ worst tendencies and defines his legacy for years to come.

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Apple insiders had hoped to mount a counter-campaign to protect Jobs’ legend with a new biography released earlier this year. Becoming Steve Jobs, written by journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, was well-reviewed and is a best seller in its own right, but has not matched the monster success of Isaacson’s book.

However, any momentum that effort might have gained ran right into the ugliness of the first official trailer, released over the summer, which showed Jobs in full jerk mode. Starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Seth Rogen as Wozniak, every frame of the two-minute trailer portrays an arrogant, smug Jobs.

A second trailer last month continued to emphasize the megalomaniacal-paternity-denying-ranting side of everyone’s favorite Apple chief executive.

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At this point, the only hope Apple insiders have is that the movie flops, though that seems unlikely. With big stars and solid reviews, it seems more likely the movie will be at least a modest hit and garner enough Oscar buzz to keep it in theaters and headlines until earlier next year.