In the movie version of Steve Jobs’ life, the role of Apple’s late CEO and co-founder may go to George Clooney. Or Noah Wyle. Or neither, because frankly this rumor seems a bit fishy.
The report comes from NOW Magazine, which says the two former ER actors are “battling it out” for the role of Steve Jobs, who died of cancer in October. However, the story names no sources and contains no other details, except for some irrelevant background on the long-running TV medical drama ER.
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The story doesn’t even mention that Wyle already played the role of Steve Jobs once, in the made-for-TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. The film, which aired on TNT in 1999, covered the early years of Microsoft and Apple, up until Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple in 1985. That led to Wyle’s appearance on stage at the Macworld Expo in 1999, playing a parody of Jobs:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os]
Even the Steve Jobs movie is still a rumor at this point, but it seems pretty likely with both the Los Angeles Times and Deadline reporting on the film’s development at Sony Pictures. Reportedly, Sony is courting Aaron Sorkin, who wrote The Social Network and co-wrote Moneyball, for the screenplay.
No matter who’s involved with the movie, it’ll probably be a big hit. Walter Isaacson’s official biography of Jobs became an immediate best-seller, with 383,000 sales in its first week, according to GigaOM.