Image caption Sorkin (right) previously wrote The Social Network, about Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is to write the script for Sony Pictures' upcoming biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

The film is based on Walter Isaacson's authorised biography and is unconnected to another proposed screen biopic, to which Ashton Kutcher has been linked.

West Wing creator Sorkin won an Oscar in 2011 for writing The Social Network.

Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal said there was "no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life".

"In his hands, we're confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining and polarising," she continued.

It was reported last month that Two and a Half Men actor Kutcher would play Jobs in a film directed by Joshua Michael Stern.

Production is scheduled to begin this month on the film said to follow Jobs' progression from "wayward hippie to revered creative entrepreneur".

Sorkin is the creator of upcoming HBO series The Newsroom, a behind the scenes look at a fictional cable news channel starring Jeff Daniels and Britain's Emily Mortimer.

He is also writing a new stage musical about the illusionist Harry Houdini, to open in Broadway in 2013 or 2014 with Hugh Jackman in the lead.

Jobs, the former chief executive of and driving force behind US technology giant Apple, died last October aged 56.