After years of speculation, vague teases, and quiet rumblings, Aaron Sorkin is finally returning to the world of Silicon Valley with “The Social Network Part II.”
According to sources, the sequel will be less about Mark Zuckerberg and pivot more around Frances Haugen — the former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower — whose 2021 testimony sent shockwaves through the tech world and ignited conversations around social media’s toxic influence.
Yes, Sorkin’s coming back. And yes, Haugen’s story makes sense. Sorkin’s script will zero in on Haugen’s decision to leak internal Facebook documents—known as “The Facebook Papers”—which exposed the company’s willful neglect of internal research around “misinformation,” “hate speech,” and “teenage mental health.”
When asked in 2021 if he’d do a sequel, Sorkin told the Happy Sad Confused podcast:
If I were going to write another movie about Facebook, I would write about what happened after [the original movie], especially the role Facebook played in undermining democracy.
Haugen leaked 10,000+ pages of documents. She testified before Congress. She met with the EU. She exposed how Facebook ignored internal research that linked Instagram to rising suicide rates in teenage girls — because, according to leaked slides, “meaningful social interaction” was more important than safety.
This is red meat for Sorkin, the writer, but can Sorkin, the director, be up to the challenge? Sure, the 2010 film was driven by Sorkin’s snappy dialogue, but David Fincher’s cold, precise, and relentless direction is what turned it into a classic.