The indie biopic that is in the works starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak (Book of Mormon) has officially cast a villain. We also now know that the film is currently being directed by a relatively unknown in Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote). It will concentrate on Job’s life from 1971 on.

Matthew Modine (Joker from Full Metal Jacket) will pay the role of Pepsi CEO John Sculley. Sculley is known as the guy who “fired” Jobs in 1985. The two clashed early on, which led to Jobs being removed from the company two years later. Scully was the CEO from 1983 to 1993. During his reign Apple rose fast and then came to the verge of being completely irrelevant.

Matthew Modine broke the news on CBS:

Modine waxes poetic on how being fired by Sculley actually helped Jobs be the man he came to be, drawing comparisons to basketball great, Michael Jordan:

“The interesting thing about that is some people may look at John Sculley as a villain in the story, an antagonist in the story. You know the story of Michael Jordan. When he was playing high school basketball, he was kicked off the team. He was cut. And had Michael Jordan not been cut, a lot of people believe he wouldn’t have found the aspiration and desire to show his coach that he was wrong and become the Michael Jordan who changes the game of basketball.”

“It’s my feeling, and I think there’s a lot of people who feel, that had John Sculley not fired Steve Jobs from Apple Computers and Steve go on the journey that he did when he was away from Apple Computers that we wouldn’t be speaking about Steve Jobs today.”

Modine also reveals that they will start filming in a couple of weeks and the film could be out as early as this Fall. That may be a stretch, but if they are working as fast as they say they are, we could definitely see it by Christmas.

The movie is now being called “jOBS”, with the “j” intentionally left lower-case – to be cute, I guess. Early reports of the working title called it “Jobs: Get Inspired”. I don’t know which is cheesier.

[img source: The Verge]