AP Photo/Paul Sakuma; Steve Granitz/WireImageUPDATE: Bale has exited the project, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, saying that the Oscar winner ultimately decided he wasn't right for the part.
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Get ready to watch Christian Bale play one of the most epic figures in the technology world...and also unleash some epic Sorkinisms.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has confirmed that the 40-year-old British actor and fellow Oscar winner will play Steve Jobs in a new biopic about the iconic former Apple co-founder, who died in 2011 at age 56 after battling pancreatic cancer. Bale was recently rumored to be a top choice for the role, as was Leonardo DiCaprio.
"What we needed was the best actor," Sorkin told financial news outlet Bloomberg TV in an interview posted on Thursday. "You know, it's like the NFL draft. There are some people who make a science out of exactly...'We need to draft a middle inside linebacker who can do this' and other teams say, 'Who's the best athlete on the board?' We needed the best actor on the board, in a certain age range, and that's Chris Bale."
"He didn't have to audition," the screenwriter said, adding, "Well, there was a meeting."
Bale, a Hollywood heartthrob, won an Oscar for his role in the 2011 film The Fighter and is also known for playing Batman/Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight trilogy. He has not commented about the Jobs movie.
Sorkin depicted a dark, comedic view of the Silicon Valley world in the semi-biographical movie The Social Network, which focused on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The film earned Sorkin his first Oscar for Best Screenplay. The 53-year-old is the creator of hit TV shows such as The West Wing, Sports Night and The Newsroom, which returns for season three on Nov. 9. Sorkin also wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated baseball drama Moneyball.
His projects contain his trademark fast-paced, detail-oriented, witty and often sarcastic dialogue (dubbed "Sorkinese").
"The role is an extremely difficult role," Sorkin told Bloomberg TV. "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 and there's a tremendous amount of language. So it's an extremely difficult part and he's gonna crush it."
In November 2012, Sorkin, told The Daily Beast that the movie will be made up of "three scenes, and three scenes only, that all take place in real time."
Christian Bale as Steve Jobs
Ashton Kutcher most recently portrayed Jobs in a 2013 film, which made more than $16 million in the United States.
The new Jobs film has been in the works for about two years and will be directed by Danny Boyle, who won an Oscar for helming the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire.
The film is based on Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography of Jobs. The book quotes an Apple II engineer who worked for the company in the '70s as saying that most of his colleagues were afraid of Jobs "because of his spontaneous temper tantrums and his proclivity to tell everyone exactly what he thought, which often wasn't very favorable."
Bale had made headlines in 2008 over a leaked audio recording of an expletive-filled rant he unleashed upon a worker on the set of Terminator: Salvation, which went viral. The actor later apologized, saying in an interview with KROQ radio, "Listen, I know I have a potty mouth."
"I make no excuses for it. It is inexcusable," he added. "I'm embarrassed by it. I ask everybody to sit down and ask themselves, have they ever had a bad day and have they ever lost their temper and really regretted it immensely."
The viral rant recording spurred memes and a remix, which the actor listened to and commented on.
(Originally published Oct. 23, 2014, at 9:52 a.m. PT)