Aaron Sorkin Says He Was His Own Second Choice to Direct The Social Reckoning
Aaron Sorkin says he was not the first person his studio wanted behind the camera for his own film. Speaking at the Newport Beach Film Festival, where he received its Maverick Director Award, the writer told The Hollywood Reporter that he was his "second-choice to direct" The Social Reckoning.
The remark came during a recording of THR's Awards Chatter podcast at the festival. Sorkin said he would have preferred David Fincher, who directed The Social Network, the 2010 film Sorkin wrote about Facebook's founding. Fincher, Sorkin said, has an exclusive deal at Netflix, while The Social Reckoning was owned by Sony.
The new film is about Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who became a whistleblower, and it sets her story against the company's leadership. Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, Mikey Madison plays the whistleblower, and Jeremy Allen White plays a journalist. Sorkin told THR that Zuckerberg is not a villain in the film. He also advised Madison not to try to copy the real Haugen, according to separate THR reporting.
Sony released the film nationwide on 9 October. Sorkin has directed four films now: Molly's Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Being the Ricardos and The Social Reckoning. He is best known as the writer of NBC's The West Wing, and he wrote every episode of its first four seasons.
The numbers so far are modest. At the time of THR's report, the film had grossed $15 million worldwide, meaning ticket sales across every market combined, against a production budget of $40 million. Its score on Rotten Tomatoes, the site that gathers critics' ratings into one percentage, stood at 54 percent.
Sorkin's comments also touch on a familiar question in Hollywood: who makes a film and who owns it. Studios often lock in directors through multi-year deals, and a star filmmaker's contract can decide which company's logo appears on a project. In this case, the choice that actually reached cinemas was shaped by those contracts, as Sorkin described them.
The Newport Beach festival, which drew 58,000 attendees at its 15th annual edition, also hosted Sorkin for a free screenwriting panel in an earlier year, according to its own records. This week's award and podcast put the spotlight on a film that has already been in cinemas for several weeks.
