Back in April, it was announced that director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and star Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street) were boarding Sony’s hotly-anticipated biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, but The Hollywood Reporter says the Titanic star has now left the project.
The re-teaming of Oscar-winner Boyle and five-time nominee DiCaprio, who had worked together on 2000’s The Beach, seemed like a slam-dunk for telling the tumultuous life of Jobs, who passed away in 2011. Apparently DiCaprio prioritized Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s currently-lensing western The Revenant over the Jobs movie, but rather than shuffling it as his follow-up project, the actor will instead take an unspecified amount of time off from acting.
According to THR, Sony’s shortlist to replace DiCaprio as the tech icon includes Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale, the latter of whom was pursued by original director David Fincher for the role. Apparently Fincher’s initial commitment to the project was wholly tied to Bale’s potential involvement, which is not surprising given the actor’s resemblance to Jobs and his masterful ability to lose weight, which will no doubt be required for portraying Jobs’ final years suffering from pancreatic cancer.
The currently-untitled Steve Jobs biopic was adapted by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography, and will be produced by Scott Rudin.
Will the prospect of working with Boyle be enough to lure Bale back to the project? Which actor from Sony’s wish list be chosen to play Steve Jobs? Let us know what you think by voting in the poll on the main page.
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