Sony Pictures has begun developing its high-profile sequel to 2010’s The Social Network and recently met with Mikey Madison (Anora) and Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) for discussions.
With Madison having won this year’s Best Actress Oscar for her stellar performance as a shrewd and independent stripper in Anora (2024), and White making a strong play for his third acting Emmy for his role reprisal as the strong-willed but self-destructive Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto in The Bear in September, the two of them are promising prospects to lead the upcoming sequel that is currently in development.
While the lauded 2010 film centred around Jesse Eisenberg’s (Now You See Me 2) Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield’s (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) Eduardo Saverin and the trials and tribulations involved in the founding of Facebook, now rebranded as Meta, its sequel film will be based on a series of articles that Jeff Horwitz had written that The Wall Street Journal that has been titled The Facebook Files. Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the 2010 screenplay and cinched an Academy Award for his efforts, has also penned the script and is slated to direct the film.
The Facebook Files chronicled the company’s internal findings, which highlighted the harmful impact its social media platforms were having on young users, acknowledged its awareness of the spread of misinformation and its links to real-world violence, and revealed its potential role in fueling the events that led up to the insurrection on 6 January 2021.
While insider sources have emphasised that no deals have been made and the film is still in developmental stages, the studio is certainly prioritising and fast-tracking the film. Sorkin has already met with Madison and White, and if offers are made and closed, Madison is slated to play Frances Haugen, the data engineer and eventual whistleblower who went to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal with her information. Meanwhile, White would play former The Wall Street Journal reporter Horwitz, who headed the exposés on the Facebook Files.
While Sony has not commented yet on the film, an insider source have disclosed that the project will be reminiscient of Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999) that depicted a whistleblower exposing the truth on the tobacco industry by talking to 60 Minutes, which Haugen had also done in her process of unmasking the dark side of Facebook / Meta. Another source has instead described the project as having echoes of Spotlight (2015), following Boston Globe journalists who investigated child sex abuse perpetrated by the city’s Roman Catholic clergy.
While it remains to be seen how the tone of the film will be and the final decisions that will be made by the creative team, with Madison and White’s ample acting accolades, they are likely to do justice to the depth and breadth of the film’s weighty topic.
Conversation with Ting Wei is like chatting with a weird AI bot programmed only with One Piece lore and theories, sitcom quotes and other miscellaneous pop culture references. When he’s not sleeping, he’s highly likely reading manga. In fact, the only thing he reads more than manga is the Bible, and it’s honestly pretty close.
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