Sorkin reshot two scenes on The Social Reckoning and left Trump unnamed
Aaron Sorkin went back for three days to reshoot two scenes on The Social Reckoning ahead of its 9 October release, saying the extra filming was to improve the film and not a response to mixed reactions to the trailer, as Variety reported on 30 September.
The film is directed by Sorkin as a follow-up to 2010's The Social Network. It stars Mikey Madison as former Facebook engineer and whistleblower Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, whose work drove the 2021 Facebook Files series on the platform's harmful effects on teenagers and its role in spreading misinformation, according to the same report.
Reshoots, extra filming after the main shoot has ended, took place after the trailer was released. Sorkin said the aim was simply to make the film better. Sony Pictures chairman and chief executive Tom Rothman gave him three days of shooting for the two scenes.
Secrecy shaped the final weeks. Test screenings, early showings used to gauge audience response, were limited to 70 Sony employees on the studio lot. Sorkin said the small, in-house audience was a measure to keep story details inside the company.
The film includes the 6 January riot at the US Capitol, but Donald Trump is not mentioned by name. Sorkin said he was never asked to leave the name out. He said he promised Rothman, without being asked, that the film would show no Trump signage or Make America Great Again material.
Sorkin described the subject as Facebook's role in the rise of divisiveness, extremism and hyper-partisanship, and how that shaped user behaviour. He said the story should not play as a party-political film even though it deals with political events.
Lawyers also shaped the dialogue. A scene in which a senior Facebook official used an expletive about a former employee was rewritten to remove the word. Sorkin said the change came at the direction of an outside legal firm hired by Sony, as reported by Variety.
What makes this stand out is how much of the film-making has happened in public view. Trailers, reshoots and legal edits are normal parts of a studio release. Here each step has been discussed openly by the director before opening night.
