Aaron Sorkin wanted David Fincher to direct “The Social Reckoning,” his follow-up to “The Social Network,” but Fincher’s exclusive deal with Netflix made a reunion a long shot. Sorkin took the job himself.
“I was my second choice to direct it,” Sorkin told IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. He sent Fincher the script anyway. Fincher read it first, met Sorkin the next morning and has supported the project enthusiastically since, Sorkin said.
Timing settled the question. Sorkin said that even if Netflix had allowed Fincher to work at Sony, he did not want the film to arrive a year after the midterm elections. He believed audiences would no longer be in the mood by then, and he wanted it out now.
Sony’s Columbia Pictures releases the film Oct. 9. The story runs from 2019 to 2021 and dramatizes the Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White). Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, succeeding Jesse Eisenberg, who earned an Oscar nomination for the 2010 original. That film won three of its eight Oscar nominations, including one for Sorkin’s screenplay.
Sorkin told The New York Times he hesitated over a sequel. “I just didn’t want to be the writer of Jaws 2,” he said. Haugen’s story finally gave him one worth telling. He also said he understands Sony received letters from Meta that were far from congratulatory. The studio hired an outside law firm to confirm that everything presented as fact is accurate, a step he called unusual for a nonfiction project.
Sorkin described Strong, a method actor, as staying in character throughout the shoot. He said he warned the other actors that Strong would treat them the way he imagines Zuckerberg treats the people around him.
The film skipped the festival circuit, and Sorkin held its first public screening last week in Silicon Valley with journalist Kara Swisher.
Fincher has spent the same period directing “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” a Quentin Tarantino-written follow-up to “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” starring Brad Pitt. Netflix will give it an exclusive Imax release in November before it reaches the streamer in December.
