Universal’s “Steve Jobs,” directed by Danny (“Slumdog Millionaire”) Boyle from a screenplay by Aaron (“The Social Network”) Sorkin, doesn’t open until Friday. But the relatively obscure German-born actor playing the title role is already the odds-on favorite to win an Oscar, ahead of such marquee idols as Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Matt Damon.
The Monday morning odds on GoldDerby, a crowd-sourced prediction site, put Fassbender’s chances at 13/5, ahead of DiCaprio (7/2), Depp (13/2) and Damon (50/1).
Those results must be particularly galling for DiCaprio, who has never won an Academy Award despite four nominations. The part was his for the taking, but he turned it down a year ago, shortly before shooting started. So did the studio’s second choice, Christian Bale.
Sorkin, for his part, was lobbying hard for Tom Cruise, according to e-mails stolen from Sony in a 2014 hack attack and released on the Internet. In one particularly embarrassing missive to Amy Pascal, then chairman of Columbia Pictures, he dismissed Fassbender as insufficiently famous.
“I don’t know who Michael Fassbender is and the rest of the world isn’t going to care,” he wrote Pascal. “This is insane.” In the next exchange, however, Sorkin came around. “F… it. He’s a great actor whose time has come.”
There are more purloined Sorkin e-mails where that came from. See Ars Technica for starters.
Below: The latest odds.
The morning line.Courtesy of GoldDerby
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
