Aaron Sorkin to write script for Sony's Steve Jobs biopic

From Facebook to Apple ... Aaron Sorkin is to adapt Walter Isaacson's bestselling biography of Steve Jobs for the big screen. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

His legacy already surrounds us in the shape of iPods, iPhones, iPads and myriad other iconic, sleek and indispensable examples of 21st-century living. Now Apple founder Steve Jobs is to be immortalised on the big screen in not one but two competing Hollywood biopics, the latest of which yesterday confirmed The Social Network's Oscar-winning Aaron Sorkin as its screenwriter.

Studio Sony's announcement that it has appointed the creator of The West Wing to adapt Walter Isaacson's bestselling official biography of Jobs immediately catapulted the film into pole position in the race to bring the late technology guru's story to the big screen, as well as marking it as potential awards season fodder. Sorkin surprised many by adapting what had looked on paper to be a rather dry tale about the Harvard-based founders of Facebook into a film which won three Oscars last year and took more than $200m at the global box office. He later admitted that his retelling was heavily fictionalised, an approach which is less likely to be acceptable when developing a story about a revered figure such as Jobs.

Sorkin had evidently been considering the biopic for some time.

"Steve Jobs's story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time," said Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal in a statement. "There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we're confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining and polarising."

Sony's biopic will be titled simply Steve Jobs, and does not yet have a director or cast. It is likely to be beaten into cinemas by a film by Swing Vote's Joshua Michael Stern, which has cast Ashton Kutcher as the Apple founder and will chronicle the entrepreneur's journey from "wayward hippie" to co-founder of the iconic technology firm, "where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time". The project, as yet untitled, could shoot as early as May in an effort to steal a march on its rival.

Sony will not be panicking overly, however, having secured a big-name screenwriter and optioned the only official biography of Jobs. Isaacson's book Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is based on more than 40 interviews with its subject conducted over two years, as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors and colleagues. It was published in the UK in October, just 19 days after Jobs died from pancreatic cancer, and sold 37,000 copies in its first five days here and more than 379,000 copies in its first week in the US. It was Amazon's bestselling book of 2011, with more than 2.2m copies sold last year. Sony optioned the book in October for a reported $1m.

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.

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