Steve Jobs was a total disaster at the U.S. box office, and now director Danny Boyle is discussing why the movie failed to find an audience.
In an interview with BBC News, Boyle said he believes the disappointing gross can be blamed on the film going wide too soon.
"It's very easy in hindsight, but I think it's probably that we released it too wide too soon," Boyle said.
He's referring to the fact that Steve Jobs was released in just four theaters on Oct. 9. Then, it quickly expanded to nearly 2,500 theaters on Oct. 25. Boyle says he thought distributors "should have built more slowly," which they could have done by slowly releasing the movie in more theaters over the course of several weeks rather than all at once.
However, Boyle didn't want to criticize Universal, praising the studio's treatment of the film and their support through the creative process.
Steve Jobs grossed $16 million domestically before it was pulled from 2,000 theaters after only two weeks. The film took home $7 million in its opening weekend, after which it experienced a 69 percent drop to $800,000 the following weekend. It has not made back its $30 million budget in the U.S.
Still, Boyle noted that the poor performance shouldn't affect Steve Jobs' Oscar chances, noting that, "it's the Oscars, not the People's Choice Awards."