“IT’S MOVIG FASTER than any of us ever imagined it would.” That’s what a manic Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) said in the 2010’s The Social Network. David Fincher’s biopic about the personal – and legal – turmoil around the launch of Facebook in the mid-2000s is a modern classic. Fifteen years later, Zuck’s words have never rung more true as online social media have shaped how we think, feel, shop, date, and most of all . . . vote.

It’s time to reexamine the impact of Facebook had on us – and it seems that The Social Network‘s Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin feels the same way. On June 25, Deadline reported that Sorkin is developing a sequel to The Social Network, with Sorkin acting as both writer and director of the project.

Deadline‘s sources state Sorkin’s movie – titled The Social Network Part II – will adapt Wall Street Journal‘s October 2021 articles “The Facebook Files,” which revealed details indicating that Facebook and its chairman, the Harvard dropout Zuckerberg, knew of the site’s toxic effects on young users and influence over the 2020 election, yet took no actions to address them.

Sorkin himself teased the project in 2021, when he told The Hollywood Reporter that Facebook’s recent years “is a story very much worth telling.” In April 2024, on an episode of the Hollywood business podcast The Town, Sorkin explicitly confirmed he was writing a new movie about Facebook, believing the site was to blame for the January 6 insurrection.

“I blame Facebook for January 6,” Sorkin said. “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Because that is what will increase engagement . . . There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth.”

While the project will exist as a sequel to The Social Network, it’s unknown if Eisenberg will reprise his role as Zuckerberg – or anyone else from the movie, for that matter. Though Zuckerberg long ago cut ties with his former best friend and co-founder Eduard Saverin, who was played by Andrew Garfield in the 2010 film. He certainly has next to no connections to the Winklevoss Twins, who sued Zuckerberg; they were played by Armie Hammer in a dual role.

But less important to continuity is Part II‘s potential to build on the genius of its predecessor. When Fincher and Sorkin embarked on making the first movie, their biggest challenge was convincing 2010-era moviegoers to watch a “period” film set in a not-at-all distant past. It was when Facebook was still a cool website for college students and teenagers. A movie about its origins? It didn’t exactly scream wildly-observant-sociology-epic, which is exactly what Sorkin and Fincher delivered. “How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?” is the actual title of the official making-of documentary of The Social Network on the movie’s DVD bonus features.

Revisit The Social Network today and you’ll find the film spine-chillingly prescient. It’s not just about how social media changed our lives at tectonic levels. The Social Network encompasses exceptionally modern ideas, from male loneliness, to toxic relationships, to the foolishness of young people, to the myopia of the old. (To say nothing of 21st-century greed.) “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars,” is the legendary line spoken by Napster founder Sean Parker, played in the movie by ex-boy-band star Justin Timberlake.

As for The Social Network Part II, without David Fincher behind the camera, it’s hard to imagine this story without the director’s deliberate eye and instinct for generating tension even in rooms where people are just sitting and talking to each other. Still, Sorkin will nevertheless try to help us understand what the hell happened these past fifteen years, and how to prepare for the next fifteen – if we make it that far.

This story originally appeared on Esquire US.

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