Aaron Sorkin said today that he had a lot of hesitation about tackling a movie about Steve Jobs. “It is a little like writing about The Beatles,” Sorkin said at the AllThingsD conference this morning. Sorkin said he “saw a minefield of disappointment” from Jobs aficionados in taking on the script for the recently announced film based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography. While the Oscar winner says it’s difficult “to shake the cradle to grave” approach of a book like Isaacson’s when adapting it for the screen, Sorkin says his approach is “going to identify the point of friction that appeals to me.” Sorkin, who received blowback for liberties he took with the actual life of Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network, told the conference crowd that they should think of biopics as “a painting, not a photograph.”

Sorkin told moderator Walt Mossberg of All Things D that he had no idea who would play Jobs in the movie but they must “talk fast and be smart.” Noting to laughter that “good actors are very hard to find” — which is partially why Sorkin says he often works with the same people — he says he has no issue with the other Steve Jobs movie starring Aston Kutcher. “Steve Jobs,” says Sorkin, is a big enough person, big enough life that there’s room for more than one movie.”

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Talking about his upcoming HBO series The Newsroom, the very traditional Sorkin told the crowd he was as nervous about its June 24 debut as he was about his very first show. “I know for sure not everyone is going to love this,” he said of the cable news drama. “A lot of great storytelling is happening on television,” Sorkin also told the digital crowd. “You’ve got to look around for the good stuff.”

(Photos: AllThingsD)