First Steve Jobs movie gets red carpet premiere

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talks to a reporter as he and his wife Janet wait in line overnight with customers to purchase the new iPad at the Apple Store in Century City Westfield Shopping Mall in Los Angeles, California March 16, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

The first movie about Apple's legendary co-founder got a warm reception at its world premiere on Friday, just 15 months after Steve Jobs' death.

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"jOBS," starring "Two and a Half Men" actor Ashton Kutcher as the tech and computer entrepreneur who revolutionized the way people listen to music and built Apple Inc into an international powerhouse, got a red carpet roll-out at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of hitting US theaters on April 19.

"jOBS" chronicles 30 defining years of the late Apple chairman, from an experimental youth to the man in charge of one of the world's most recognized brands. It is the first of two US feature films about Jobs, who died in 2011 at age 56.

"Everybody has their own opinion about Steve Jobs, and they have something invested in a different part of his story. So the challenge is to decide what part of his story to tell, and not disenfranchise anybody," director Josh Stern told Reuters ahead of the screening.

"Hazarding a guess and venturing into too much speculation is always dangerous, especially with a character who is so well-known," Stern added.

The film, co-starring Josh Gad and Dermot Mulroney, begins with Jobs the dreamer, the poet and the occasional drug user in college, and his initial ideas for Apple Computers, before his vision took on a life of its own.

Much of the drama is based around the early 1980s, and Jobs' ideologies for the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers, which ended up performing poorly for the company and led to Jobs being fired.