By Jeremy Nigro
Aaron Sorkin is well-known as an expert screenwriter, with a flair for writing smart and snappy dialogue. He has written for theatre, television, and film, and is best known for being the showrunner (pretty much the small screen version of a cinema director) for The West Wing and The Newsroom, as well as scripting A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Moneyball and most recently, last year’s Steve Jobs biopic. “I have complete control in television, I have complete control when I’m doing a play, but I do not have complete control when I’m doing a movie,” Sorkin told FilmInk in 2015. “But I have worked with directors who are very generous and are eager for my input.”
It has recently been announced that Sorkin will be joining their ranks after being attached to write and direct the film, Molly’s Game, which has just entered pre-production for a 2017 release date. Molly’s Game is based on a 2004 memoir by Molly Bloom, a cocktail waitress who found herself as the host of Hollywood’s most prestigious weekly poker tournament. The memoir is extraordinary in some of the names that it drops (with Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck and a certain Leonardo to name a few) and the ridiculous amounts of money that ended up on the table each night.
Jessica Chastain will star as Molly, who soon finds herself the target of an FBI investigation and the Russian mob. As the net begins to tighten, she seeks help from her only ally: a criminal defence lawyer played by Idris Elba. So the question is: will Sorkin prove to be just as talented a director as a writer? Certainly the scenario seems right for his trademark snappy dialogue; imagine a bunch of celebrities and high rollers sitting around a poker table shooting the shit.
Will he follow in the footsteps of successful writers turned directors like Charlie Kaufman, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, and Frank Darabont? The Academy Award winning writer looks like a sure thing, but we’ll just have to wait and see when the film comes out next year. Directing is certainly something that Aaron Sorkin has been working up to for a while. “I haven’t worked with a director who has done anything but elevate the script,” he told FilmInk in 2015. “But that isn’t to say that in post-production, in the editing room, you won’t beg for the seventh take instead of the fifth take that they’re using because I love the reading so much more. But let me put it this way: I get much, much more out of the bargain than I lose. But still, I think in almost every film that I’ve written, there’s a moment when I would like to stop the projector and mention to the audience how I would have done it…”
With Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin will finally get his chance…
