Sony Corp.’s movie studio hired screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to give Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs the Mark Zuckerberg treatment.
Sorkin will write and direct the film, based on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, Culver City, California-based Sony Pictures Entertainment said Tuesday in a statement. The screenwriter won an Academy Award for his adaptation of “The Social Network,” the 2010 Sony film that chronicled the early years of Facebook Inc. under founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The film will mark Sorkin’s directing debut. “Steve Jobs,” released last year, was the top-selling hardcover of 2011 by a 2-to-1 margin, with 2.25 million books sold, Sony said, citing Publishers Weekly data. The book was Amazon.com Inc.’s best-selling book of 2011.
“There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin,” Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal said in the statement. ‘In his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining and polarizing.’’
The movie is the second one planned covering the life of Jobs, who died last year at age 56. Ashton Kutcher is set to play him in an independent production, “Jobs,” Variety reported in April.
