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David Fincher Reportedly Wants Too Much for Steve Jobs Biopic

Too much money, and too much control. According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Fincher and Sony Pictures have come to an impasse in negotiations over the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic. THR q...
David Fincher Reportedly Wants Too Much for Steve Jobs Biopic
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Too much money, and too much control.

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Fincher and Sony Pictures have come to an impasse in negotiations over the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic. THR quotes sources who say that Sony Pictures is now looking to replace Fincher as director “due to his aggressive demands for compensation and control.”

    More specifically, Fincher reportedly wants $10 million up front and is demanding marketing control over the film. Apparently, the studio thinks this is “ridiculous.”

    A little history on this Steve Jobs movie–

    About the time that we learned that Ashton Kutcher would be playing Jobs in an indie biopic, we heard that another Jobs biopic was coming to the big screen–one based on the best-selling biography by Walter Isaacson. Rumor had it that The Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin would write the script. This was all in 2011, and Sony Pictures didn’t confirm Aaron Sorkin as the official screenwriter until a year later.

    Nearly two years later, in January of 2014, Sorkin turned in his script for the movie.

    March brought reports that David Fincher was in talks to direct the film. Of course, the The Social Network featured the powerful duo of Fincher and Sorkin as director and screenwriter, respectively. So this all made sense.

    Speaking of demands for control, The Wrap recently reported that Fincher gave the studio a Bale or nothing ultimatum-basically saying that he would only direct the project if Sony would cast Christian Bale in the lead role.

    Bale was never and still isn’t officially or unofficially attached to anything, however.

    Both THR and Mashable note that Fincher could still be in the running for the job, if either side changes their tune a bit–but it certainly appears that the relationship is strained. What’s good for both parties involved is that everything was still in the negotiating phase–nothing had been set in stone.

    And what’s good for us is that this frees up Fincher to do something more interesting than this Steve Jobs biopic.

    Fincher’s latest film is Gone Girl, an adaptation of an incredibly popular novel by Gillian Flynn. It stars Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, and Neil Patrick Harris–and it set to release on October 3rd. The first trailer just dropped last night:

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