The Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher has had its release delayed indefinitely, in a potentially misguided marketing move.

If you're yearning to watch Ashton Kutcher play with computers, you're going to have to keep watching Two And A Half Men.

A film that was already famous, is now on the verge of infamy. 

The first Steve Jobs biopic Jobs, has had its release date pushed back from April 19 in North America to an indefinite date.

As if the sitcom solution wasn't galling enough, you're supposed to believe this delay is purely for marketing reasons.

It's a bit hard to fathom how the distributor of a movie that has been firmly in the public eye since the casting of Kutcher is suddenly claiming it doesn't have enough time to "prepare for a proper release and create buzz for the film."

What higher profile, or buzz, the film can aspire to is unclear. In fact, this announcement serves only to give the film a weaker reputation in the marketplace where the suspicion is it is being recut.

A film that was already famous, is now on the verge of infamy.

It has already hit a number of stumbling blocks, including its name. Once called jOBS, in a presumed play on the Apple "iNAME" convention, and even referred to in some press as iJobs, it was quietly re-formatted as Jobs at the beginning of the year.

Also starring Dermot Mulroney and Matthew Modine, the film, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and written by Matt Whitely, tracks Steve Jobs life from college drop-out to Apple visionary from 1971 to 2001.

Having had its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, the film's proposed April release was intended to coincide with the 37th anniversary of the founding of Apple.

Unfortunately, the film was not well received at Sundance.

"While Steve Jobs changed the world with his innovations and forward thinking, the first biopic about him, Jobs, does not," said SlashFilm's Germain Lussier.

Most damning was the response from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to the first clip from the film, in which he is portrayed, by Josh Gad, talking to Kutcher's Jobs.

Wozniak described the scene as "totally wrong". He then participated in some damning interviews.

"Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed. I'm embarrassed," he wrote to Gizmodo, "but if the movie is fun and entertaining, all the better."

Wozniak told The Verge that he had been approached to work on the film but turned the offer down after he "read a script as far as I could stomach it and felt it was crap."

"The early script did things like promote drugs in ways that were as foreign as the clip I saw."

It must be noted that Wozniak has a number of vested interests, careful to promote his own book iWOZ, and having signed up to work on the Aaron Sorkin-penned, rival Steve Jobs biopic, being produced by Sony.

That film, based on the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, is building its own buzz, with Sorkin, who also wrote The Social Network, indicating his film will comprise only three scenes, shot in real time.

Sorkin told Mashable "All I can say at this early stage of the game is that any time you see, 'the following is a true story,' you should think of it as a painting, not a photograph."

At this point, the bigger question is when Kutcher's painting is going to be unveiled or whether it should be quietly stored in the attic

- © Fairfax NZ News