INSIDE The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook (played by one of The Hollywood Bureau’s favorite new emerging actors Jesse Eisenberg) is the one most wounded by a film that seems to portray him as someone who created the application “to get girls or to gain power,” according to Chris Hughes, a co-founder who left in 2007, who spoke to the New York Times.
Facebook is the subject of a soon to be released big Hollywood movie. In a well-reported piece in The New York Times this past weekend, we learn that Facebook has tried to have it both ways with “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s much-anticipated new thriller from Sony. A look at the rise of Facebook and the effect it's had on its founders. About: Aaron Sorkin was commissioned by Sony and producer Scott Rudin to write a movie about Facebook. Interestingly, Sorkin had little to no knowledge of Facebook when he got the job. The film will also star Justin Timberlake who will play Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became the founding president of Facebook. Andrew Garfield stars as Eduardo Saverin, a former founder who had a fallout with Zuckerberg.

Facebook executives have tried to shape the direction of the movie, and when that didn’t really work, they’ve tried to ignore it. That’s not really working either. Zuckerberg told WaxWord as much in a casual conversation in Sun Valley more than a month ago. “I started Facebook to improve the world, and make it a more transparent place,” he said then. “This movie portrays me as someone who built Facebook so I could meet girls.”

The Hollywood Bureau has learned from inside sources that Facebook negotiated feverishly for months with Sony to get them to base the script and film on an authorized history of the company written by New York Times writer David Kirkpatrick, instead of the more glammed up sexy account by Ben Mezrich, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

“We would have cooperated with them if they could have made a movie that was the real story,” Zuckerberg said. The back and forth with filmmaker Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin did result in changes, but the article doesn’t say what, or how much. Sony did not respond by publication to a request for more detail on what was changed in the film. Ultimately Zuckerberg lost his fight to be the hero of the story – and what better director to bring that story to the screen.

The New York Times wrote: “In Mr. Sorkin’s telling, Mr. Zuckerberg is not so much villain as antihero, a flawed human being whose deep need for acceptance becomes the driving force behind a website that offers the illusion of it.” Facebook looked at legal action, but the First Amendment seemed to give Sony enough cover to go its own way. That’s likely because the founding of Facebook and its subsequent rise did lead to several lawsuits over who founded what, who owned how much and who retained control. The lawsuits were settled. So much for finding out “the truth.” With Facebook under the gun for its privacy policy and under scrutiny for looming so large in society, the company has enough on its plate.

So the strategy has been to ignore the film. But the trailer is all over the popular social network site, and the Facebook page for the movie has been ‘liked’ by 12,480 people as of Sunday night. And early screenings have already created Oscar buzz. Regardless of the publicity and fall-out one thing is certainly for sure and that is Facebook has played a major role in the world’s POP Culture story.

"The Social Network" movie will hit theaters nationwide on Oct. 1. The film is also scheduled to open the N.Y. Film Festival

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