Swipe
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Edward Norton (Steve Jobs), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Eric Schmidt), Christopher Lloyd (Steve Ballmer)
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 120 minutes
Fincher would explore the friendship between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, the ways in which Apple and Google's partnerships repeatedly out-manoeuvred Microsoft (Christopher Lloyd in his best bit of bald buffoonery since he played Uncle Fester in The Addams Family), and the subsequent fallout when Jobs discovered the extent of Schmidt's duplicity.
In lesser hands the role of Jobs in particular could easily become a scenery-munching Al Pacino shoutfest, but Edward Norton has the acting chops to deliver a nuanced portrayal that encompasses both Steve Jobs' legendary charm and his famous rages. Anybody can shout, but Norton can do cold fury like nobody else - remember American History X? - and he's got just the right amount of cheekiness to do a convincing Reality Distortion Field too.
When Norton as Jobs finally blows his top once he's discovered the truth about Schmidt you'll be shrinking back in your seat in fear.
Swipe wouldn't just be an opportunity for Norton to show his range, though: the talented Mr Hoffman would bring real gravitas to the Eric Schmidt role, and as we've seen in films such as Doubt and Capote, he can make even repellent people interesting and worth watching. To him, Android's imitation of iOS is just business - but to Jobs, it's a deep and personal betrayal.
Steve-E
Director: John Lasseter
Starring: n/a
Certificate: U
Running time: 81 minutes
Pixar's great genius, like Walt Disney's, lies in its ability to invest non-human characters with real warmth and depth, and that genius would shine through this tale of a bad-tempered robot who only wants to make beautiful things.
Dialogue-free and with a restrained, barely there soundtrack largely consisting of obscure Bob Dylan tracks, Steve-E would follow the eponymous, anthropomorphic robot as each day his attempts to make something perfect in the sterile world of Infinite Loop end in frustration and fury.
Steve-E rages wordlessly and often, and his fellow bots become increasingly irritated by his perfectionism and rule-breaking; when Steve-E loses his temper at a meeting and attacks high-ranking bot Scull-E, he finds himself exiled to the snowy wastes of Siberia.
Exiled with only his pet bee, Woz, for company, Steve-E travels the icy climate, until one day he discovers a frozen robot of a strange and foreign design. Reactivating the bot, he discovers that it is iVE, an industrial design-bot, and the two robots form a fast friendship based on creating beautiful designs in the snow and ice.
As their friendship matures, iVE discovers the power of simplicity, while Steve-E discovers the power of friendship. Steve-E returns from exile with iVE in tow to save the world from poor design.
The penultimate scenes of Steve-E looking down on the world he's saved could move entire cinemas of grown men to tears.
Insanely Great
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges (Steve Jobs), John Goodman (John Sculley), Steve Buscemi (William HB Gates)
Certificate: PG
Running time: 113 minutes
We can't imagine the Coen Brothers making a straight Steve Jobs biopic; they're much more likely to set it in an enormous art-deco skyscraper in a heavily fictionalised, 1950s New York casting Jeff Bridges in full-on Dude mode as a wise-cracking and permanently bombed innovator who doesn't smell so great.
Insanely Great would follow the story of Stephen P Jobs, Esq as he designs steampunk-inspired computers for his own company, Appler Industries. Jobs loves his work and business is booming - or so he thinks. However, Jobs' love of jazz cigarettes means he's missed important clues: while he's been taking care of the products, his right hand man, John Sculley, hasn't been taking care of business.
