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Aaron Sorkin confirmed during a live recording of “The Town” podcast that he is currently working on some kind of sequel to “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s acclaimed 2010 drama about the creation of Facebook that won Sorkin the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
“Look, yeah, I’ll be writing about this,” Sorkin said about the social media company’s recent years. “I blame Facebook for January 6.”
Sorkin would not answer why he blamed Facebook for Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, but he teased: “You’re going to need to buy a movie ticket.”
“I’m trying [to write a movie about it],” Sorkin elaborated. “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Because that is what will increase engagement. That is what will get you to — what they call inside the hallways of Facebook — ‘the infinite scroll’ … There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth.”
Sorkin added, “If Mark Zuckerberg woke up tomorrow morning and realized there is nothing you can buy for $120 billion that you can’t buy for $119 billion dollars, ‘So how about if I make a little bit less money? I will tune up integrity and tune down growth.’ Yes, you can do that by honestly switching a one to a zero and a zero to a one.”
Whatever Sorkin is cooking up sounds more like a spiritual successor to “The Social Network” than a direct sequel. The 2010 film starred Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and was a critical darling (it earned eight Oscar nominations, including best picture) and a box office hit with $224 million at the worldwide box office. Quentin Tarantino even named it the best film of the 2010s.
Sorkin first floated the idea of penning a sequel to “The Social Network” in 2021 when he said that “what has been going on with Facebook these last few years is a story very much worth telling, and there is a way to tell it as a follow up to ‘The Social Network,’ and that’s as much as I know.” But he had also once said on the“Happy Sad Confused” podcastthat the only way a sequel to the movie would move forward is if David Fincher agrees to direct it.
Fincher spoke The Guardianlast year and seemed conflicted about tackling Facebook and its parent company meta in a new film, saying: “Aaron and I have talked about it, but, um … that’s a can of worms.”
As for Eisenberg, who earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Zuckerberg, he’s long expressed an openness to reprising the role in a potential “Social Network” sequel.
“Oh, yeah,” he once said. “To play a good role in a popular thing is very rare. This was an opportunity to play a complicated character that you’d normally play onstage or an art film, but on a big scale. For me, that was incredibly fortunate.”
Listen to Sorkin’s full appearance on “The Town” podcast here.
