Steve Jobs Selected Centerpiece of the 53rd New York Film Festival

Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs to screen on Saturday, October 3

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the selection of Universal Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ Steve Jobs, written by Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War) and directed by Academy Award winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), as the Centerpiece of the upcoming 53rd New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), to screen on Saturday, October 3.

Boyle and Sorkin joined forces to create this film about the brilliant man at the epicenter of the digital revolution, working from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography. Steve Jobs stars Michael Fassbender in the title role, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, and Katherine Waterston as Chrisann Brennan. The producers are Mark Gordon, Guymon Casady, Scott Rudin, Boyle, and Christian Colson.

New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: “You hear that a bio of Steve Jobs is being produced, and of course you see multiple possible movies in your head… but not this one. ‘Steve Jobs’ is dramatically concentrated, yet beautifully expansive; it’s extremely sharp; it’s wildly entertaining, and the actors just soar—you can feel their joy as they bite into their material.”

“I am honored that our film has been selected as the Centrepiece of this year’s festival,” said Boyle. “And thrilled and terrified too, unlike the subject of our film, who would have taken the whole thing very much in his stride. Steve Jobs was a thoroughly contradictory and complex character who forged our digital age. He’s the kind of brilliant, flawed character that Shakespeare would have relished writing about, and storytellers of all kinds will be fashioning and re-fashioning the mythology of the digital revolution for generations to come. I hope that festivalgoers enjoy our take.”

Sorkin and Boyle have created a dynamically character-driven portrait of the co-founder of Apple, weaving the multiple threads of their protagonist’s life into three daringly extended backstage scenes, as Jobs prepares to launch the first Macintosh, the NeXT workstation, and the iMac. The film is a dazzlingly executed cross-hatched portrait of Jobs, set against the changing fortunes and circumstances of the home computer industry and the ascendancy of branding, of products, and of oneself.

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Senior Programming Advisor; Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound.

NYFF previously announced Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk as Opening Night, Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead as Closing Night and Luminous Intimacy: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, the first-ever complete dual retrospective of the experimental filmmakers.