If at first Ashton Kutcher doesn’t succeed at playing Steve Jobs, try again — with an Oscar winner.
Christian Bale is director David Fincher's choice to play the Apple cofounder in the Sony biopic, TheWrap reported Thursday, citing an unnamed individual familiar with the still-gestating project.
SEE ALSO: Watch Newly Discovered Footage of Steve Jobs' First Public Mac Demo
We should caution that Bale is a long way from taking the role. Just because Fincher wants him doesn’t mean the erstwhile Bruce Wayne is going to do it, as a lot of pieces must fall into place. TheWrap also reported that when Fincher met with honchos at Sony (for which he also directed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), he made it clear that he’ll only direct the biopic with Bale on board.
Considering that the team on the Jobs movie is the same gang behind the Best Picture-nominated The Social Network —Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin — the temptation for Bale to pull on the black turtleneck is pretty great.
There are downsides. For starters, Kutcher already played Jobs in the independent biopic Jobs, which came out last August to tepid reviews and earned only $16 million at the U.S. box office. Plus, Bale is said to be taking a break from acting after a long shoot playing Moses on Ridley Scott’s Exodus, so the Jobs biopic, set to start filming late this year or early next, may hasten his return.
But there are also reasons to believe Bale will join the team.
The team behind the second attempt at a Jobs biopic, based on Walter Isaacson’s well-researched bestselling biography, has a much more compelling pedigree, and an Oscar nomination for Bale wouldn't be a stretch. Plus, Bale’s obvious physical resemblance to Jobs and his proven ability to transform his body (he was downright portly in American Hustle, but remember how skinny he was for his Oscar-winning supporting role in The Fighter?) made him the presumptive front-runner for Hollywood dream-casters since the Apple project was first announced.
Plus, how could anyone pass up the chance to add Steve Jobs to a list of roles that already includes Moses and Batman, for crying out loud?
Here’s betting Bale takes the big stage to announce the first iPhone sometime in 2015.
Jobs fights with Mike Scott, who was the first CEO of Apple from February 1977 to March 1981. But the fight was for naught: According to the book, "Scott relented, at least for the purpose of the badge, but the Bank of America required a positive integer for its payroll system and Jobs’s remained #2."
Sometimes Jobs didn't seem to care about money...
... but other times he basked in the perks of his billionaire status.
Was he a rebel or a businessman?
Jobs trusted his designer Jony Ive, having lunch with him every day Jobs was at the Apple HQ.
Even when his horrified family and doctors begged him to eat more protein to help him fight his spreading cancer, Jobs wouldn't give up the fasting and eating habits of his youth.
Jobs led to company to tell less than the truth, drawing the ire of journalists and stockholders.
But anyone who's experienced someone suffering from liver failure knows, those masks really are poorly designed.
His colleagues say this was one of his most angry tirades.
Sometimes Jobs would devolve into sheer cruelty. Here he interviews a candidate along with software engineer and pal Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Jobs on the original Mac team.
Ouch.
The author had access to Jobs for years, and sums up the Apple CEO's unique abilities near the end of the book.
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