We’re used to seeing these zillions of comedy sketches on Funny or Die, which usually have big names attached like Jim Carrey, Ryan Gosling, Rashida Jones, Will Ferrell, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zach Galifianakis, and many more. Some of the highlights include Behind Two Ferns and Drunk History. The site founded by Ferrell and Adam McKay‘s Gary Sanchez Productions is now going to the movies.
Oddly enough, over the weekend Funny or Die made a Steve Jobs parody biopic with Justin Long in the lead. As you may already know there are two Jobs biopics out there: the first, JOBS starring Ashton Kutcher is already complete and ready for the masses. The other over at Sony has Aaron Sorkin attached to script. Not much headway has been made on that one.
iSTEVE, which will come in at 60-75 minutes will make its online debut on April 15th. With Jobs, who has a massive following and tremendous amount of respect, the crew behind the biopic is already prepared for even the harshest critics. Producer Allison Hord says that, “even the harshest fanboy critics will be able to laugh with us.” Ryan Perez who wrote the script admits that there wasn’t much background done, “In true Internet fashion, it’s not based on very thorough research — essentially a cursory look at the Steve Jobs Wikipedia page. It’s very silly. But it looks at his whole life.”
Hord said it all started with a simple idea, “We were kicking around the idea of making a fake Steve Jobs movie trailer, and as often happens in a writers’ room, the joke kind of escalated.” With Long in the lead as Jobs, James Urbaniak will play Bill Gates and Michaela Watkins takes on the role of Melinda Gates. We also can’t forget Steve Wozniak with Jorge Garcia (Hurley from LOST) stepping into his shoes. Garcia is also working with Sorkin on the biopic set up at Sony.
The film may not have had as much effort put into it as the others but as Perez jokingly said, “We might not be the best, but we will be the first.”
It’s small, but below is a preview of the first poster.