Sony Pictures will pay up to 3 million dollars for the film rights to Steve Jobs' authorized biography, according to the film trade website Deadline.com, DPA reported.
The report said that the studio would make an upfront payment of 1 million dollars to author Walter Isaacson, whose book Steve Jobs goes on sale on October 24. The payment could rise to 3 million dollars depending on the success of the film, the report said.
The book, which is based on over 40 interviews with the Apple co-founder, is the only biography that Jobs authorized. Isaacson, the former editor of Time, said Jobs had placed no restrictions on his research and did not demand the right to censor anything or even review the book prior to publication.
In an interview last week, Isaacson said he had interviewed Jobs in the weeks before he died when he opened up about his reasons for finally agreeing to cooperate with a biographer.
"I wanted my kids to know me," Jobs told Isaacson. "I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did."
The emergence of Sony as the leading contender for filming Jobs' life story is somewhat ironic. It was one of Jobs' most famous products, the iPod music player, that signaled the demise of Sony as the world's leading consumer electronics company as it eclipsed Sony's Walkman as the top portable music player.
Sony Pictures is also one of the major competitors of Disney, in which Jobs became the largest single shareholder after it bought out the Pixar animation studio that he founded.