Aaron Sorkin to Write Steve Jobs Biopic

Steve Jobs passed away less than a year ago, but Hollywood can't wait to make films about him. Currently Ashton Kutcher is filming 'Jobs,' which follows Jobs' rise to power, but now Sony has thrown their hat in the ring, and has Aaron Sorkin adapting Walter Isaacson’s biography 'Steve Jobs' for the big screen.

Of course we've seen thematically similar pictures compete at the box office before, like asteroid pictures ('Deep Impact' vs. 'Armageddon') or volcano flicks ('Dante's Peak' vs. 'Volcano'), but this could be the first competing bio-pictures. This year we come pretty close with the release of 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' and Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln, though we're guessing they cover completely different terrain.

The difference between the two 'Jobs' films is prestige, and Sorkin has it in spades as a highly respected scribe. He recently won the best screenplay Oscar for 'The Social Network' and was nominated for 'Moneyball.' Ashton Kutcher is currently on 'Two and a Half Men' and won a People's Choice Award for Favorite Web Celeb. Kutcher has also done well at the Teen Choice Awards.

Here's the press release:

AARON SORKIN TO ADAPT “STEVE JOBS” FOR SONY PICTURES
–Film to be Based on Walter Isaacson’s Best Selling Biography of Late Apple Co-Founder-

CULVER CITY, Calif., May 15, 2012 – Academy Award® winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin will adapt Steve Jobs, a motion picture based on the best-selling biography of the legendary Apple co-founder by award-winning journalist Walter Isaacson, it was announced today by Amy Pascal, Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Doug Belgrad, President of Columbia Pictures. The project is being produced by Mark Gordon, Scott Rudin and Guymon Casady.

Published late last year, Steve Jobs was Amazon’s best-selling book of 2011. In addition, the biography ranked #1 among bestselling hardcover books by a 2:1 margin, with sales of 2,246,569 in 2011, according to Publisher’s Weekly.

Commenting on the announcement, Pascal said, “Steve Jobs’ story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing.”

AARON SORKIN won the Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on The Social Network. His other screenplays include Moneyball, Charlie Wilson’s War, The American President, Malice, and A Few Good Men. He has also acquired the motion picture rights to The Politician, the best-selling book by Andrew Young about the downfall of former Senator John Edwards. He will adapt the book and make his directorial debut with the film, which he will also produce. For television, Sorkin created “The West Wing,” “Sports Night,” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” He is currently in production on the HBO series “The Newsroom,” which is scheduled to premiere on June 24, 2012. For the stage, Sorkin wrote “A Few Good Men” and “Making Movies”; he returned to Broadway in 2007 with “The Farnsworth Invention.” Sorkin will return to the theater and make his Broadway debut as a librettist with the 2013-2014 production of “Houdini.” Based on the life of legendary magician Harry Houdini, the musical will star Hugh Jackman and will feature music and lyrics by Oscar and Grammy winner Stephen Schwartz.

With Rudin attached as producer, this is going to be an Oscar contender when it hits screens, of that there's little doubt. Now all it needs is a script, a cast, a director and a release date, and pretty much everything else.