Christian Bale will play the role of Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple Computer, in an upcoming biographic movie, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin confirmed in an interview cited by the Hollywood Reporter. According to Sorkin, the production needed the best actor of a certain age range for the part, and Bale was their obvious choice – there wasn’t even an audition, just a meeting, the screenwriter said. At the time when director David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club) was to helm the project, Christian Bale was his choice for the role, but prestigious actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper were also among the choices in discussion.
The new Jobs movie will be an adaptation of the biography of the Apple founder written by Walter Isaacson in 2011, titled Steve Jobs. Shooting will begin in the next few months, with Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) set to direct, as Fincher has since left the project. The script will contain plenty of Sorkin’s fast paced dialogue – “more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined”, he said – but considers Christian Bale to be up to the challenge. The movie will be produced by Scott Rudin, Guymon Casady and Mark Gordon. Sony has not commented on the news yet.
Christian Bale made his debut in a TV movie titled “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna” in 1986. Since then he was involved in over 40 projects, ranging from Demetrius in the 1999 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Batman, John Connor, Patrick Bateman (in American Psycho), Trevor Reznik (the paranoid machinist in The Machinist) or John Preston, the gun kata priest from Equilibrium. Bale has won one Academy Award, and was nominated for several others, including several Saturn Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA awards and others.