Sony Pictures acquires rights to Steve Jobs biopic
Sony Pictures has successfully bid
for the rights to turn Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs into a motion picture. Deadline reports the deal is worth between one to three million dollars and headed by producer Mark Gordon. Deadline suspects bidding had already been taking place for film rights, but recent events have intensified interest.
Sony Pictures is responsible for the Oscar-winning film The Social Network, a semi-biographical account of Mark Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook. Even though Sony Pictures has apparently secured film rights, any film version of Steve Jobs is likely to be years away from seeing release in theatres, which may slightly help alleviate the turmoil some of us might feel at the news of this film coming so soon after his death.
Pirates of Silicon Valley, another semi-biographical film portraying a young Steve Jobs, debuted on TNT in 1999. Needless to say, there's a lot of Steve Jobs's life that movie couldn't have covered. As long as the film version of Steve Jobs is handled tastefully and with dignity (and isn't released while all of our emotions are still raw), it's got my support.
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs will be released October 24.
