STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE to make TV Debut on CNN/U.S.
Following successful theatrical and festival exhibitions, film debuts as CNN Films broadcast Sunday, Jan. 3 at 9:00pm ET
STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will make its global television premiere on CNN/U.S. Sunday, Jan. 3 at 9:00pm Eastern with an encore to air on CNN/U.S. immediately following the premiere, the network announced today. The CNN Films broadcast of the acclaimed documentary will be presented with limited commercial interruption by Volkswagen.
STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE is a candid biography of the Apple co-founder’s incredible true life and legacy. Directed and narrated by Academy® Award-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), this captivating film features exclusive interviews with people close to Jobs at various stages of his storied life, including Chrisann Brennan, the mother of his oldest child; Daniel Kottke, formerly Jobs’ roommate, college classmate, and Apple’s twelfth employee; former Apple executives Bob Belleville, Jon Rubinstein, and Andy Grignon; other industry contemporaries; and also journalists who covered him throughout the years.
The frank film leverages a mix of the new interviews with archival footage, intimate photos, relatively rare video of Jobs speaking during media interviews – and previously unseen video from a legal deposition as Jobs attempted to explain his role in the Apple stock option backdating scandal. The story moves from Jobs’ heady rise from Silicon Valley whiz kid to CEO, to his ouster from Apple and triumphant return, the Foxconn and stock option controversies, and the worldwide outpouring of grief upon his untimely death in 2011. A man who was both revered as an iconoclastic genius and feared by some as a barbed-tongued tyrant, the film also attempts to explain the carefully constructed mythology of Jobs, perhaps the most publicly-admired corporate figure of the technology age.
“I ended up changing my entire life…I lost my wife in that process, I lost my children…the whole structure of my life was just changed forever by going to work on that Mac…work was intense, the commitment needed to do it was intense…,” recalls Belleville, who was lured to the fledgling Apple to engineer the Macintosh. Yet, Belleville also weeps as he reads a letter he wrote commemorating Jobs’ death, emotionally describing him as “a combination of James Dean, Princess Diana, John Lennon, and maybe Santa Claus.”
At the time of Jobs’ death, his name and image had become synonymous with the sleek, high-tech personal devices that came to define and transform the first two decades of the 21st Century. The highly secretive creation and careful launching of each new Apple product continue to be the focus of mass media interest and global consumer aspiration.
STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will be available via desktop (www.CNN.com/go), iPad, Apple TV, Roku, and across CNN’s mobile platforms. After the broadcast premiere, the film will be On Demand for seven days via CNNgo. The film will also encore Saturday, Jan. 9, at 8:00pm Eastern.
STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE had its world premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival and was co-produced by Jigsaw Productions and exhibited by Magnolia Pictures in theaters nationally. For more information about this film, please visit www.CNN.com/cnnfilms.
About CNN Films
CNN Films produces, acquires, and commissions documentary feature and short films for theatrical and festival exhibition and distribution across CNN’s multiple platforms. Amy Entelis, executive vice president of talent and content development for CNN Worldwide, oversees the strategy for CNN Films and CNN Films Presents. Courtney Sexton, senior director of program development, manages the day-to-day operations for CNN Films and works directly with filmmakers to supervise original projects. For more information about CNN Films, please visit www.cnn.com/CNNFilms and follow @CNNFilms via Twitter.
CNN Worldwide is a portfolio of two dozen news and information services across cable, satellite, radio, wireless devices and the Internet in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Domestically, CNN reaches more individuals on television, the web and mobile devices than any other cable TV news organization in the United States; internationally, CNN is the most widely distributed news channel reaching more than 271 million households abroad; and CNN Digital is a top network for online news, mobile news and social media. Additionally, CNN Newsource is the world’s most extensively utilized news service partnering with hundreds of local and international news organizations around the world. CNN is division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company.