With the Mac community still in full mourning days after the Apple co-founder’s death a year ago, plans were already being announced for not just one, but two Steve Jobs movies. These plans include the big guns starring and writing, which is only fitting for covering the life of someone like Jobs, who changed our lives with his products and is remembered as such a visionary.
The first movie will star Ashton Kutcher. He's used to stepping into the shoes of famous men, having married Demi Moore after she divorced Bruce Willis, and having stepped into a costarring role on Two and a half Men after Charlie Sheen's departure.
Kutcher's costar in the film is quite impressed. Josh Gad, who will play Steve “Woz” Wozniak seems to have stars in his eyes as he gushes about Kutcher. “Ashton is going to blow a lot of people away. His performance was absolutely transformational.” Gad is among many who are shocked at how much Kutcher resembles Jobs in the film.
It's well known that Kutcher is a big techie, being the first Twitter user to reach a million followers, as well as being an investor in several tech companies, including Skype and Foursquare. Gad recognized how much he immersed himself in the role, saying, “I think he has an appreciation for Steve Jobs, the likes of which I’ve never seen in any actor who’s portrayed a real, living person.”
Aaron Sorkin is writing the other biopic and is basing it on Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs. Like Kutcher, he also has a background to make him perfect for the job. While he is the screenwriter behind films like A Few Good Men and television series like The West Wing, he is also the screenwriter behind The Social Network, the film about Mark Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook. Obviously Sorkin knows a thing or two about creative technological visionaries.
No stars have been indicated for the film yet. However, Sorkin does have his own interesting vision concerning the direction of the film. His current plans include having the entire film being just three thirty-minute scenes, and each scene will be a different product announcement. The announcements for the original Mac, NeXT, and the iPod, certainly all key to Jobs' life, as well as Apple history as a whole, will be detailed.
Handling the film in this way should give Sorkin a good opportunity to explore the the Apple leader, by making it as much about his products as about the people he worked with, from the Woz on down. Sorkin commented that “These people … revere him despite the fact that he made all of them cry at one point. But he made all of them better.”
Both of the Steve Jobs movies look like they'll be a big draw with audiences, especially the fans and users of Apple products. Both movies are planned for release in the next year. With Kutcher's film, titled Jobs, already in the filming stages, expect to see it first.
Photo Credit: TMZ