Aaron Sorkin, who brought the story of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to the big screen in the Oscar-winning drama The Social Network, looks set to tackle another tech innovator with news that he's "strongly considering" an offer to write a biopic about Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Speaking to E! Online, Sorkin – creator of The West Wing and a writer on forthcoming Oscar-tipped Brad Pitt drama Moneyball – said he was currently reading Walter Isaacson's biography of the late Apple co-founder, which studio Sony paid a reported $1m to option last month.
"Right now I'm just in the thinking-about-it stages," said Sorkin. "It's a really big movie and it's going to be a great movie no matter who writes it. He was a great entrepreneur, he was a great artist, a great thinker. He's probably inspired [my 11-year-old daughter] Roxy more than he's inspired me … she plays with all his toys."
Isaacson's book Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is the only authorised book about Jobs's life. Published in the UK just 19 days after Jobs died from pancreatic cancer, it sold 37,000 copies in its first five days here and more than 379,000 copies in its first week in the US. The volume is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors and colleagues.
Sorkin was personally acquainted with Jobs – the pair spoke regularly by phone and Sorkin was even asked to write a Pixar movie at one point. Jobs was a founder of the animation studio and one of its chief financial backers in the early days of the company. Sorkin turned down the offer, saying he didn't "know how to tell those stories".
The only previous film to tell Jobs's story was 1999's made-for-TV docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley, which starred ER's Noah Wyle as the Apple founder.
