Sixteen years ago, David Fincher wowed audiences with the dorm-room origin story of Facebook with “The Social Network.“
The movie would go on to earn eight Oscar nominations and three wins and make stars out of Jesse Eisenberg as its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, and Andrew Garfield as Zuck’s former friend and collaborator, Eduardo Saverin.
Now, Aaron Sorkin, who won an Oscar for penning “The Social Network” script, is taking on the writing and directing duties for the movie’s follow-up, “The Social Reckoning.”
In this movie, things have changed dramatically for Zuckerberg, as Facebook has grown into one of the most influential companies on the planet. But the company has some dark secrets.
Oscar winner Mikey Madison plays Facebook engineer Frances Haugen, who has put her trust in Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White, to expose the company’s internal research and decision-making.
Sorkin based the script on The Wall Street Journal’s expansive investigative series The Facebook Files, which delved into the social network’s impact on youth mental health, misinformation, and the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
Sony will release the movie on October 9. Here’s everything we know.
Aaron Sorkin has wanted to do a “Social Network” follow-up for years.
Sorkin is no stranger to exploring power and the people who wield it. When he wasn’t creating shows like “The West Wing” and “The Newsroom,” he wrote the scripts for movies like “The American President” and “Steve Jobs.“
But he’s never been able to let go of Zuckerberg and Facebook. In a 2020 interview for the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, he noted that what fascinated him about a continuation to “The Social Network” was exploring “the dark side of Facebook.“
That interest intensified a year later when The Wall Street Journal released The Facebook Files.
By the spring of 2025, Sony announced that Sorkin was attached to write and direct a follow-up movie.
“There isn’t a life that Facebook’s algorithm hasn’t touched, and that influence has reshaped everything,” Sorkin told a room full of movie theater owners at their annual convention, CinemaCon, back in April. “It’s time to say more.”
Mikey Madison plays Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
This marks Madison’s first role since she won the best actress Oscar for “Anora.”
The Facebook Files is based on the thousands of pages of internal documents leaked by Haugen, who was a product manager at Facebook. Once Haugen’s identity was revealed as the whistleblower, she did a “60 Minutes” interview and testified at a Senate hearing that Facebook knew it could be harmful to young people.
Jeremy Allen White plays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz.
White is best known for playing Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto on the hit series “The Bear,” which earned him two Emmy wins. White has portrayed a real person before: he played Bruce Springsteen in the 2025 biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
Horowitz is a former technology reporter at The Wall Street Journal who was behind The Facebook Files.
Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg.
Strong has a track record of taking on challenging roles. He crafted the complex nepo baby Kendall Roy from “Succession” into one of the most memorable characters in modern television. He’s since wowed audiences with his performances as Donald Trump’s cutthroat lawyer, Roy Cohn, in “The Apprentice,” and Bruce Springsteen’s loyal producer, Jon Landau, in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
Playing an adult Zuckerberg will be his biggest transformation yet.
Since founding Facebook, Zuckerberg rebranded it as Meta in 2021, focusing on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.
Soon after Haugen testified at the Senate hearing, Zuckerberg announced on an earnings call that Meta was hiring 40,000 people to work in safety and security because, he said, “we care about getting this right.” Facebook has long said it endorses establishing rules for online platforms.
The first ‘Social Reckoning’ trailer was released in June.
Sony released the first teaser trailer of the movie on June 10.
Meta did not respond for comment about the trailer.
Watch it below:
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