'Social Network' writer lined up for Jobs biopic

Aaron Sorkin receiving his award for Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network (GETTY IMAGES)

When it comes to turning technology pioneers into box-office material, Aaron Sorkin is Hollywood's go-to guy.

The Oscar-winning writer, who brought the story of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to the big screen, is being lined up to pen a biopic of Steve Jobs.

Sorkin, who won his Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Social Network, revealed he is reading Walter Isaacson's biography of the Apple founder, who died last month, with a view to turning it into a major movie.

George Clooney and ER star Noah Wyle are being considered for the lead role in the film, to be made by Sony Pictures, which paid £645,000 to option Isaacson's best-selling book.

Wyle played Jobs in a 1999 TV film, Pirates of Silicon Valley, the only previous occasion in which he was dramatised.

"Sony has asked me to write the movie and it's something I'm strongly considering," Sorkin told the entertainment news website E! Online.

"Right now I'm just in the thinking-about-it stages. It's a really big movie and it's going to be a great movie no matter who writes it."

Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, was asked to write a film for Pixar when the technology innovator ran the animation studio.

Sorkin said: "He was a great entrepreneur, a great artist, a great thinker."

However, the movie may not be entirely flattering. Isaacson's book, based on 40 interviews with Jobs, details his brutal verbal attacks on employees, often before firing them, and his fierce temper.

The book, released days after Jobs' death from pancreatic cancer aged 56, sold 380,000 copies in its first week of release in the US.