Jeremy Strong’s take on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg officially debuted with the launch of the first trailer for Aaron Sorkin‘s “The Social Reckoning,” a follow-up to 2010’s “The Social Network.” Sorkin won an Oscar for his screenplay of the first movie and returns to write and replace David Fincher as the director of the new film. He recently told Vanity Fair that he spent three days trying get Jesse Eisenberg back as Zuckerberg.
“I felt like it belonged to him, and he was certainly battle-tested,” says Sorkin of originally wanting Eisenberg to reprise his Oscar-nominated role. “He simply did not want to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore, that he has his problems with the guy. He doesn’t like kids coming up to him in airports with business cards that say ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ for him to sign.”
Per Vanity Fair: “Coincidentally, it was at the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar Party that Sorkin first mentioned to Eisenberg that he had a script that he wanted him to read. Just a few minutes later, at that same party, he ran into Jeremy Strong, who asked Sorkin what he had been up to, and Sorkin told him about the script. Strong indicated that if Eisenberg wasn’t interested, he would be.”
Eisenberg said as much himself in an interview last year with BBC Radio 4’s “Today.” The actor said he was not keeping up with Zuckerberg’s life because “I don’t want to think of myself as associated with somebody like that.”
“It’s not like I played a great golfer or something and now people think I’m a great golfer,” he explained. “It’s like this guy that’s doing things that are problematic — taking away fact-checking and safety concerns, making people who are already threatened in this world more threatened.”
“The Social Reckoning” centres on Facebook engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), whose reporting exposed the company’s internal research and decision-making. A 2021 investigative series revealed Facebook’s harmful effects on teens and its role in spreading misinformation, including content linked to political violence.
From Variety US
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