Pixar president: Steve Jobs would have been 'appalled' by biopic

Pixar president Ed Catmull has said that Steve Jobs would be “appalled” with Danny Boyle’s biopic.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Catmull claims that the film, scripted by Aaron Sorkin, fails to provide an accurate representation of the Apple icon.

“I think he’d be appalled,” he said. “And they actually can’t tell the story because the story’s wrong. He went through an arc in his life. There was a time [when] the way he worked with people was not good, and I saw that when I first worked with him. But peo­ple look at that dramatic part, and they’ll make a movie about that — and that’s not the story.”

Catmull believes the film missed the “aspect of the change of Steve”, which saw him become “an empathetic person”.

He is the latest in a string of figures who knew and worked with Jobs to express their thoughts on the film. John Sculley, who was Apple’s CEO and is portrayed in the film by Jeff Daniels, had mixed feelings.

“I think Steve would see a lot of things about this film that he would like: first of all, it’s a perfectionist product,” he said. “Everything about it: the acting, the directing, the screenplay. But, I also think [he] would be a little bit hurt, because many people who never knew the young Steve Jobs could go away from this movie and think, ‘well I know Steve Jobs’. Well guess what? You don’t. Because that is not the complete Steve Jobs.”

While Steve Jobs gained mostly positive reviews from critics, it flopped at the box office, making just $22m worldwide to date. It’s still predicted to be a major Oscar contender, with pundits predicting nominations for Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Kate Winslet as marketing executive Joanna Hoffman.