Image: Sony Pictures
Fifteen years after Jesse Eisenberg made Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg look like the socially awkward tech genius he is in director David Fincher’s The Social Network, the film’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, is back at it again. Deadline reports that Sorkin will write and direct The Social Network Part II, a follow-up to the 2010 film about the formation of Facebook.
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The film is reportedly based on The Facebook Files, The Wall Street Journal’s scathing series of articles about the social media titan published in October 2021. In those articles, it was revealed that Facebook permitted certain accounts to bypass company policies, dragged its feet in dealing with human trafficking networks on the platform, and ignored its own internal research into the harm Instagram was doing to teens’ mental health. Since the first Social Network created Oscar-worthy drama out of the Winklevoss twins suing Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea—and the Facebook head honcho being a dick to co-founder and former friend Eduardo Saverin—this follow-up will surely have more than enough material to remind us how deleterious the company has been to the world at large.
It’s important to note that while the film is titled The Social Network Part II, sources told Deadline the movie will not be a direct sequel to the original film. There hasn’t even been any confirmation of Eisenberg returning to reprise his role as Zuckerberg, or that any of the original cast members will appear. What is reported is that the film will touch on Facebook’s influence on the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Sorkin has gone on record blaming the company for the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol.
Zuckerberg didn’t like the first Social Network, and I can’t imagine he’ll be too happy with the follow-up—especially if it essentially paints his greatest creation as a virus on humanity.
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