We’re getting yet another Hollywood sequel. Deadline reports that Aaron Sorkin will be directing The Social Network II, a follow-up to the film that chronicled the development of Facebook and the ensuing lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg. The next movie will take its inspiration from a 2021 investigation by The Wall Street Journal into the harms caused by Facebook and the company’s failure to address those problems.
Sorkin has a long career as a writer, including the screenplay for The Social Network, but only three credits as a director on his resume. There’s no production date for the movie at this time, and it’s unknown whether actors from the original will return to their roles, most notably Jesse Eisenberg as Zuck.
Facebook certainly provides no shortage of potential inspiration for a biopic. Just in the past six months, the platform dug a deeper hole for itself when it tried to quash a tell-all memoir with some pretty wild behind-the-scenes stories from a former employee. Facebook also eliminated its third-party fact checkers and gutted its own hate speech policy, which was unsurprisingly followed by an increase in violent content and harassment. But given all the negative hits for Facebook’s reputation, viewers may not be too excited about spending two hours or more stewing in all the crappy stuff the network has done.
