Aaron Sorkin has kicked rumors and speculation to the curb and confirmed that Christian Bale will indeed play Steve Jobs in Danny Boyle’s as-yet-untitled biopic.
News comes via Bloomberg, where The West Wing scribe formally confirmed Bale’s involvement in the film, stating that The Dark Knight is “gonna crush it” as the late visionary.
“We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale. It’s an extremely difficult part and he’s gonna crush it. There was a meeting. The role is an extremely difficult role; he has more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined. There isn’t a scene or frame that he’s not in.”
While the casting of Bale is hardly surprising, early reports indicated that he was one of the many actors in contention for the role, with the likes of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and, more recently, Leonardo DiCaprio vying for the lead.
Taking an entirely different approach than last year’s Ashton Kutcher-led vehicle, Danny Boyle’s depiction of the Apple genius will rely on Walter Isaacson’s rather excellent 2011 biography of Jobs, thereby approaching his inspiring career from a slightly different perspective.
With Boyle and Sorkin on board, we’re hoping that the creative pairs portrayal of Steve Jobs will explore the man in greater depth, as opposed to Joshua Michael Stern’s skin-deep portrait late last year. Going off of Sorkin’s quote, we figure the film will be a dialogue-heavy and, hopefully, unflinching biopic of the revered entrepreneur — possibly channeling the screenwriter’s previous work on The Social Network, too.
We understand that filming is due to get underway soon on the Danny Boyle project, and we’ll keep you posted on the filmmaker’s depiction of Steve Jobs as more information appears.
