UPDATE: Christian Bale is out, according to Variety.
ORIGINAL POST: It’s official — Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale will star as Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic about Apple’s famous founder. Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin are behind the project, which will begin shooting in a few months time.
Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay in The Social Network, a film about the meteoric rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is hard at work on a new screenplay for the film, which is based on Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography Steve Jobs. Sorkin told Bloomberg that Bale is the only actor they even considered for the role of Jobs.
Related: Read our Jobs movie review
“We needed the best actor in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale,” Sorkin said, claiming “He didn’t have to audition,” before adding, “Well, there was a meeting.”
Earlier reports hinted that Leonardo DiCaprio was also considered for the part. In the end, it seems that Bale won out. This is not the first time that a studio will attempt to translate Jobs’ life to the big screen. Ashton Kutcher starred in a controversial 2013 film entitled Jobs, which received poor reviews and was deemed inaccurate by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. Sorkin assured Bloomberg that this latest biopic on Jobs will be different, thanks to Bale.
“He has more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined,” Sorkin said. “There isn’t a scene or a frame that he’s not in. So it’s an extremely difficult part and he is gonna crush it.”
It’s unknown when the movie will finish shooting or arrive in theaters.
