Today marks the 15th anniversary since the release of The Social Network, a movie with views on the potential perniciousness of social media that seem quaint a decade and a half later. (Fun fact: Despite featuring Peter Thiel, the film makes no mention of the Antichrist.)
But back in 2010, The Social Network was simply the story of two former friends and the far-cooler amount of a billion dollars.
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In 2011, as the film was making its awards run — ultimately losing Best Picture at the Academy Awards to The King’s Speech — Gold Derby spoke with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin about what originally drew him to the project, and it had nothing to do with Facebook.
“I wasn’t on Facebook, and I didn’t know much about Facebook,” he told Gold Derby at the Critics’ Choice Awards. “What brought me to the project was that it felt like this timeless story about friendship and loyalty and power, betrayal, class, jealousy. The kind of thing that Aeschylus or Shakespeare would have written about or a few decades ago Paddy Chayefsky would have written about. It’s just lucky for me that none of those guys were available, so I got to write about it.”
Sorkin did manage to snag an Oscar that year, though the same can’t be said for the director of The Social Network, David Fincher. Sorkin had high praise for the filmmaker on the red carpet.
“I can’t say enough about David,” he said. It’s an overused word, but he’s an honest-to-God genius. He is so artful that every frame of this movie, for me, is breathtaking.”
Now in 2025, we know that Sorkin is returning to the world of Mark Zuckerberg for the recently announced Social Network “companion piece,” The Social Reckoning. This time, however, he’ll be the one behind the camera, taking over directing duties from Fincher.
When Gold Derby spoke with Sorkin most recently at the junket for his latest directorial effort, Being the Ricardos, he commented on his growth as a director, at the time three features in.
“I can tell you I’m feeling more confident,” he said. “More confident and yet the more you learn the more you discover you have to learn.”
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