Steve Jobs will be the featured film at the prestigious festival, which kicks off September 25 and runs through October 11. The film, which casts Michael Fassbender as the eponymous tech entrepeneur, will be screened Sunday, October 3.
Based on the Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Jobs, Steve Jobs features a script penned by Oscar-winning writer Sorkin (The Social Network) and Oscar-winning director Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), and chronicles Jobs’ life and career against the backdrop of three major product announcements at various points in his timeline. Along Fassbender as Jobs, the film stars Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, and Katherine Waterston as Chrisann Brennan.
“You hear that a bio of Steve Jobs is being produced, and of course you see multiple possible movies in your head … but not this one,” said New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones in a statement accompanying the announcement. “Steve Jobs is dramatically concentrated, yet beautifully expansive; it’s extremely sharp; it’s wildly entertaining, and the actors just soar — you can feel their joy as they bite into their material.”
Along with Steve Jobs as the festival’s centerpiece film, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk will be the festival’s opening night screening, with Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead closing out the event.
“I am honored that our film has been selected as the Centrepiece of this year’s festival,” said Boyle in his own statement accompanying the announcement. “And thrilled and terrified too, unlike the subject of our film, who would have taken the whole thing very much in his stride. Steve Jobs was a thoroughly contradictory and complex character who forged our digital age. He’s the kind of brilliant, flawed character that Shakespeare would have relished writing about, and storytellers of all kinds will be fashioning and re-fashioning the mythology of the digital revolution for generations to come. I hope that festivalgoers enjoy our take.”
Steve Jobs is scheduled for a wide release October 9.
