The beleaguered biopic about late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has been given the official, obvious title of Steve Jobs. Universal made the announcement along with revealing a synopsis, cast, and confirmation that filming is underway. As writer Aaron Sorkin first suggested in 2012, long before the movie became plagued by interminable delays, Steve Jobs will be framed around three important Apple product launches:
Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, the film takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.
The project meandered for some time at Sony, with everybody from Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale to the digitally reconstructed consciousness of Jobs himself attached to the lead role. David Fincher was once on board to direct, before being replaced by Danny Boyle. Boyle, in turn, walked as the project continued to stall. Finally, Sony dropped the film entirely (right around the time Sony got hacked, for conspiracy theorists still looking to connect pushpins on their SonyGate evidence board). Universal nabbed the picture and secured Boyle’s return to the project. Further casting details, like Natalie Portman passing and Jeff Daniels joining, have turned any attempts at summarizing Steve Jobs into a confusing pile of hyperlinks.
Universal’s “hard reset” strategy seems to be working: Set videos have recently emerged, detailing that Boyle filmed scenes in the actual garage where Jobs and Wozniak built the first Apple computers. Of course, the story of Steve Jobs is more than authentic garages and gumdrop-colored desktops. It also has these people:
- Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs
- Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, former Macintosh marketing chief
- Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder
- Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, former Apple CEO
- Katherine Waterston as Chrisann Brenna, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend and mother of his child
- Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, an original Apple Macintosh development team member
- Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo, and Mackenzie Moss as Jobs’ daughter Lisa Brennan at various stages of her life
- Sarah Snook as Andrea Cunningham, project leader of Apple Macintosh
- Adam Shapiro as Avie Tevanian, Apple Computer Senior VP of Software Engineering
With this cast in place and shooting underway, Steve Jobs now has a pretty good chance of becoming an actual movie, probably.