UK publications Now and The Sun have heated up the rumor mill over who will play the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in a Hollywood biopic on which filming is expected to start next year. At the top of the list? Heart throb George Clooney and fellow “ER” TV doctor Noah Wylie.
Depending on how you look at it, both actors have things for and against them. Clooney is a proven leading man material, though is recovering from an injury sustained in filming another movie and looks less like Jobs than does Wylie. At age 50, Clooney would be a stretch to play Jobs in his 20s, when Apple started up.
Wylie, 40, played Jobs once before, in the 1999 TV movie about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates called “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” and even made a cameo during a MacWorld conference (see video clip below). But will producers really want to go to that well again? You’d think they’d want to separate this movie from that one.
Of course, the more interesting casting decision might be about who will play the irreverent Steve Wozniak, who started Apple with Jobs.
The real Steve Jobs appeared in cinemas earlier this month via a showing of a “lost interview” with Apple’s leader by journalist Robert Cringely.