Aaron Sorkin has been threatening for a while now to return to the Mark Zuckerberg well, having mused on and off for years about a follow-up to his 2010 Oscar-winner The Social Network. Now, Deadline has confirmed that Sorkin is working with Sony on The Social Network Part II, based on “The Facebook Files,” a series of 2021 reports from The Wall Street Journal detailing dysfunction at the company. And, really, what’s not to like? The original The Social Network is a genuine masterpiece, after all, a synthesis of Sorkin’s ability to distill all the wild vagaries of human communication and information down into incredibly pithy chunks, and David Fincher’s insatiable sense of style, so there’s no reason to think that the two men couldn’t—hm? Oh, right. Huh.
So, yeah, Sorkin is both writing and directing the new film, which will join his directorial filmography alongside Molly’s Game, The Trial Of The Chicago 7, and Being The Ricardos. (Did you know you have to click an extra tab on his IMDB page just to see the movies he’s directed? Never an amazing sign.) We’re not trying to throw shade here—”The Facebook Files” were fascinating, and there’s no reason to think Sorkin can’t build something compelling out of an attempt to turn those stories into a narrative examining all the effects that social media has had on our brains in recent years. It’s just that we, personally, would rather stick our hands in a woodchipper than invite people to compare our work directly to Fincher’s at the height of his powers, so the thought of slapping a Part II on one of his best movies is a little daunting.
Sorkin has talked around some of the ideas he hopes to tackle with the film in the past, including his belief that Facebook directly contributed to the January 6 riots in 2021. (And he was saying that before Zuckerberg embarked on his latest round of sucking up to the Trump White House.) That being said, sources were apparently quick to caution that the film isn’t strictly a Jan. 6 movie, and that it’ll “focus not just on the 2020 election but also Facebook’s effect on teens, preteens, violence and countries outside the U.S.” The biggest question hanging over the film, meanwhile, is casting: Jesse Eisenberg, who starred as Zuckerberg in the first film, has been pretty vocal about not wanting his entire brand tied up with the CEO’s any more, so god knows if Sorkin will be able to lure him around for another go.
