In 2010, Aaron Sorkin wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Social Network, about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the rise of Mark Zuckerberg.
Now 16 years later, Sorkin has revisited this world in The Social Reckoning, this time taking an alarming look at what the network has become.
The former film documents the meteoric rise of Facebook and its billionaire CEO, Zuckerberg – a tale of daring, hubris, backstabbing and the messiness of creation. But now comes a very different story, one about the dark consequences of that creation.
Written, directed and co-produced by Sorkin, the film is based on the 2021 true story centred on the Wall Street Journal’s expose, The Facebook Files, while also drawing on the power of social media to spread misinformation.
The Social Reckoning sees Mikey Madison star as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who teams up with Wall Street Journal tech reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White, to expose the social network’s most closely guarded secrets.
The film sees Jeremy Strong take over the role of Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg, and also stars Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen and Betty Gilpin.
Speaking about returning to this world, Sorkin, renowned for writing political dramas such as The West Wing and The Newsroom, says he was most alarmed by the way Facebook promotes “rage bait” content.
“It’s tough sledding. It wasn’t the amount of misinformation that Facebook is pumping into the world. That’s bad and it is alarming. There just is something more alarming, which is that Facebook is knowingly sending you content that is going to make you angry because you’re more likely to reshare it,” says the 65-year-old filmmaker.
“They want you to reshare things. That’s what keeps you on the platform. That’s what keeps you scrolling, and so between those two things, it becomes easier to see how some of the things that have happened happened.”
Speaking about casting Strong as Zuckerberg, Sorkin says he had originally wanted Eisenberg to reprise the role, but the actor no longer wanted to be associated with the tech mogul.
“I went first to Jesse Eisenberg, who had played Mark, and discovered that Jesse is very happy that he made The Social Network. He was nominated for an Oscar, he has great memories of it, and it did a lot for him. But he doesn’t want to be associated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore,” he explains.
“He doesn’t like being conflated with the guy.
“And it’s funny, on the night of not this most recent Oscars, the one before that, Jeremy Strong was nominated for The Apprentice, playing Roy Cohn, and I saw him at a party. He came up to me and asked me what I was doing, and I told him what I was working on. He said, ‘If for any reason Jesse doesn’t want to do it, please ask me’. So I did.”
He adds: “It’s not the same character. It’s the same character 16 years later. The same character, 16 years older. The company is now worth $1 trillion and has three billion users. He’s married with kids. This is a different guy. He’s also a little bit scarier.”
When asked whether he received any backlash for making the film, Sorkin says: “I have to say that at a time when Luca Guadagnino’s film Artificial was bumped from Amazon, when Stephen Colbert was fired by CBS and Jimmy Kimmel was (temporarily) let go by ABC because somebody doesn’t like the stuff that they’re saying, when the Alex Gibney Elon Musk documentary can’t advertise on any social media platform because they don’t want to make Elon Musk mad, Sony, the studio behind The Social Reckoning and The Social Network, [CEO] Tom Rothman didn’t flinch.
It’s not the same Mark Zuckerberg. It’s the same character 16 years later. The company is now worth $1 trillion and has three billion users. He’s married with kids. He’s also a little bit scarier
— Aaron Sorkin
“From the moment I turned in the script, they said, ‘We’re making the movie’.”
Amazon recently dropped Italian filmmaker Guadagnino’s film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after striking a lucrative partnership with the tech company. Meanwhile, US talk-show host Kimmel was temporarily taken off air following comments he made about the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
Allen White, 35, who recently played Bruce Springsteen in a biopic, says he relied on Jeff Horwitz’s audiobook and interviews conducted by Sorkin to prepare for the role.
“I never spent time with Jeff. I didn’t speak to him,” says The Bear star.
“I think Aaron spoke to him a great deal in the process of writing and preparation. I had just come off playing Bruce and talking about the Bruce film about a year ago before doing this, and I told Aaron when I was meeting him to talk about this, ‘I just want to tell this story, this version of Jeff’. I listened to Jeff a lot.
“I found his book, his audiobook, and he narrated it. And so I had his voice in my head a great deal, and I tried to learn as much as I could about this period of time and the relationship between Jeff and Francis. But otherwise, I just took it upon myself to try and figure him out, really.”
Madison, 27, who won an Oscar for her performance in the 2024 film Anora, says she wanted to represent Haugen as accurately as she could.
“When I was presented with the script, I immediately looked up Frances because I also didn’t know who she was, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a woman who is incredibly different from me in many ways’. And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m ready for that physical transformation, whatever it will take’,” she explains.
“But when I met Aaron, it was very clear that he did not want me to represent Frances in a physically accurate way. He really just wanted me to play the character from his script, and I struggled with that a bit. But ultimately, I decided I really wanted to tell the story. He had also written such an incredible character, and so for me, I think it was more about just building the character from the ground up, purely from the script.
“But then, of course, there were some things that I really wanted to try and bridge the gap with in some small way, if it was possible for me. Coeliac disease is something that Frances, the real Frances Haugen, also deals with, and so it was important for me to try and represent that.”
The Social Reckoning (15, 112mins) is in cinemas now
