EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Sorkin will make his directorial debut on Molly’s Game. This is the adaptation of Molly Bloom’s memoir that he signed on to write when Steve Jobs producer Mark Gordon optioned the book in late 2014. Amy Pascal has joined Gordon as producer on a film that has now taken root at Sony Pictures. Sorkin, who won the Oscar for his script for The Social Network, is a front-runner this season in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for his Steve Jobs script.

It seems hard to imagine that for all his success in movies, TV series creations including The West Wing and The Newsroom, and stage work including A Few Good Men that Sorkin has never gotten behind the camera before. He sparked to Bloom’s unlikely life story. A world-class skier since she could walk, Bloom is equal parts talented, brilliant and headstrong. By the time she was 21, she was ranked No. 3 in North America in moguls while maintaining a 3.9 GPA as a political science major in college.

Stung after failing to make the Olympic team, she decided to take a year off before law school, get a job as a waitress in Los Angeles and enjoy warm weather for a while. Through a bizarre set of circumstances as well as untapped entrepreneurial skills, she ended up making millions by running, for eight years, the most exclusive high-stakes poker game in the world. Her life came crashing down when 17 FBI agents armed with automatic weapons rang her doorbell. Leopoldo Gout is exec producer.

Sorkin is repped by WME and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.