Christian Bale will play Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic of the Apple co-founder, according to the film’s writer, Aaron Sorkin.
Bale was the favourite to play Jobs after Leonardo DiCaprio left the project earlier this month. Other actors previously linked to the role included Matt Damon and Bradley Cooper.
“We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale,” Sorkin told Bloomberg.
Sorkin, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network, has reportedly delivered a script that plays out three key scenes from Jobs’s life in real-time. Each one takes place backstage at an Apple product launch.
“[Bale] has more words to say than most people have in three movies combined,” said Sorkin. “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.”
Sorkin’s take will be directed by Danny Boyle and is based on Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, the bestselling official biography of the tech genius. Isaacson’s book, which featured interviews with more than 100 family members and colleagues, was published shortly after Jobs died on 5 October 2011 of complications arising from pancreatic cancer.
The Bale-Sorkin-Boyle collboration follows the 2013 film Jobs, in which Ashton Kutcher took the title role. A more traditional biopic, it charted the rise of the computer wizz from college dropout to the man with everyone’s number. It was panned by critics on its release, with New York Magazine’s Bilge Ebiri calling it “the equivalent of a feature-length slow clap”.
