Aaron Sorkin is apparently in the weeds of a new screenplay that’s being styled as a potential sequel to The Social Network, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Academy Award-winning scribe behind West Wing, Moneyball, and A Few Good Men broke the news himself during a recent appearance on The Town podcast. And it sounds far more politically charged than the first David Fincher-directed film starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and Armie Hammer.
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“I blame Facebook for January 6,” he explained when prompted about how the social media platform (and social media as a whole) has influenced democracy in the years since 2010.
When questioned about how specifically, Sorkin replied: “You’re going to need to buy a movie ticket.”
“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,’” he continued.
“There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. There’s just growth.”
“If Mark Zuckerberg woke up tomorrow morning and realised 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 switching a one to a zero.”
Aaron Sorkin has previously alluded to something being in development. However, he seems to have backflipped on his sole condition for taking on such a project: only writing if David Fincher returns to direct.
Back in 2021, he revealed legendary film producer Scott Rudin had repeatedly slid into his inbox, asking about whether it was time to give the people a long-awaited follow-up.
“I’ve gotten more than one email from him with an article attached saying, ‘Isn’t it time for a sequel?’” said Aaron Sorkin.
“First of all, I know a lot more about Facebook in 2005 than I do in 2018 — but I know enough to know that there should be a sequel.”
Elsewhere, during his appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Sorkin reiterated his desire to make The Social Network sequel.
“I do want to see it. And Scott [Rudin] wants to see it. People have been talking to me about it. What we’ve discovered is the dark side of Facebook… [former Facebook/Meta Platforms COO Sheryl] Sandberg and [Mark] Zuckerberg seem uninterested in doing anything about it,” he said.
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Sorkin added: “This all ends up with [Facebook investor Roger] McNamee in a Senate basement secure conference room briefing Senate Intelligence subcommittee members on how Facebook is bringing down democracy. ‘We have a huge problem here and something needs to be done about it.’”
At the time, Sorkin had been in discussion with McNamee to adapt the latter’s book Zucked — an “intimate reckoning” with the catastrophic failures of Facebook as a platform, the ensuing damage to democracy it has caused, and the “even more unsettling realisation that Zuckerberg and Sandberg [were] unable or unwilling to share McNamee’s concerns.”
Stay tuned for any relevant updates on The Social Network sequel.
