It took celebrated author Walter Isaacson over 600 pages to surmise the life and times of the late, great Steve Jobs – Danny Boyle has just shy of two hours.
For the director’s latest, much-hyped venture behind the lens, Boyle will be placing the visionary’s time at Apple under the microscope as he charts three of the most crucial product launches of Jobs’ career: the Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998.
Based on a script by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin, Boyle’s biopic has muscled its way into the Oscar race really rather early, and today’s trailer effectively validates its status as one of the dark horses entering the awards race. Starring Michael Fassbender in the title role as the flawed genius, Steve Jobs will explore his troubles both on and off stage, dealing with a turbulent personal life and estranged daughter.
Indeed, Universal’s feature will also encompass the period that Jobs left Apple in the mid-80s, where product failures and the rise of John Sculley to CEO threatened to send the figure into a mid-life crisis. It wasn’t until his return to the mega-company 12 years later that Jobs reversed his own fortunes and that of the company’s, revving its stock into the stratosphere.
And in its transition to the screen, one element of Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs that has been garnering a lot of attention has been Sorkin’s script treatment, and star Kate Winslet believes that all members of the audience will be able to relate to the biopic on some level.
[Aaron] Sorkin makes it almost not about Steve Jobs at all. It’s about how that man has 100 percent dictated how we all live our lives today and how we function as people. The film is about all of us, and all of us today, not in ’84 or ’88 or ’98. I mean, look at us all — how we function. You look at a lot of toddlers today, they’ll pick up any screen of any kind, and they don’t push a button, they swipe. It’s horrifying but kind of extraordinary, and that is Steve Jobs. As a parent of a small child, it’s alarming. I remember the days of rotary phones. I’m 39 years old, so it wasn’t that long ago.
Universal Pictures will chart the rise and rise of a tech-savvy genius when Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic opens in theaters on October 23.
