David Fincher

Director David Fincher struck gold in 2010 with Sony Pictures’ The Social Network, the film about the birth of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and the complicated gallery of people who developed it.  Now comes word that the notoriously picky two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker may be in early talks to develop another feature centered around another polarizing fixture in the Silcon Valley boon – Apple visionary Steve Jobs.  The film would reunite Fincher with his Social Network colleagues in writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin. Sony would again distribute.  Sorkin, who won the Academy Award for adapting Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaire into The Social Network and has most recently been at work on the third season of the HBO drama The Newsroom, has recently finished a script based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography Steve Jobs. 

The film would most certainly deal with Jobs’ achievements as inventive revolutionary who shepherded Apple as a business leader on terms of computers, cell phones, and computer-generated animation.  Yet Jobs was also a polarizing and complex figure both within and outside of his community.  Through the unique prism that has already been exploited by Fincher and Sorkin, this may mark one of the more fascinating projects on the potential horizon. This wouldn’t be the first Steve Jobs biopic to enter the marketplace.  Last summer, jOBS, directed by Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote) and starring Ashton Kutcher, came out in theaters; however, that film earned poor reviews and middling box office. This version already has the support of one key person – Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will serve as a consultant.

Fincher, who won an Emmy award last fall for directing the pilot episode of the Netflix series House of Cards (for which he also serves as a producer), just finished filming Gone Girl, a thriller starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn.  That film is due for release, courtesy of Fox, this fall.