Aaron Sorkin tried for three days to sign Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Reckoning
Aaron Sorkin won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for 2010’s The Social Network so when it came to casting the follow-up, he didn’t hesitate to give Jesse Eisenberg a shout.
The Social Reckoning director Aaron Sorkin spent three days trying to convince Jesse Eisenberg reprise his role of Mark Zuckerberg for the new movie.
Sorkin won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for 2010’s The Social Network - about the founding of Facebook and the ensuing legal troubles - so when it came to casting the follow-up, he didn’t hesitate to give Jesse a shout.
However, he soon found that it was going to be a lot harder than he anticipated getting Jesse on board, and told Vanity Fair he accepted defeat after three days of attempting to persuade Jesse to sign on for the new film.
He said: “I felt like it belonged to him, and he was certainly battle-tested. 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, b****’ for him to sign.”
Sorkin’s interview comes after Jesse himself said he feels like he has outgrown playing the Facebook CEO.
Speaking on Today, he said: “Listen, for reasons that have nothing to do with how amazing that movie will be, really, truthfully.
“But when you play a character, you feel, at some point, you’ve grown into something else.”
Asked if he feels he has outgrown the character, he added: "Yeah, something.”
In The Social Reckoning, the role of Eisenberg will be played by Jeremy Strong, who told the Hollywood Reporter the movie script was one of the greatest he’s ever read.
He added: “It speaks to our time, it touches the third rail of everything happening in our world. “It’s a great character — fascinating, complex — and I’m approaching it with great care and empathy and objectivity.”
The new movie is set 17 years after The Social Network and will focus on Facebook engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), who teams up with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to bring attention to the platform's biggest secrets.
The screenplay delves into the story behind the Wall Street Journal's Facebook Files, which were a series of October 2021 articles by Horowitz that sought to expose Facebook's inner workings, and the harms caused by them.
The movie will also delve into the impact the site has on teenagers and preteens, as well as violence, and its wider effect on countries around the world.
