Aaron Sorkin Returns to Facebook With The Social Reckoning

The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The Social Network, opens on 9 October. Sixteen years ago Sorkin won an Oscar for his screenplay about the founding of Facebook; now he has directed the story of how the company’s secrets came out.

The film is built on real events from 2021: the leak of internal Facebook documents by the company’s engineer Frances Haugen, working with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz.

What the film is about

Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) is a data engineer at Facebook who sees that the company knows far more about the harm its products cause than it admits in public. She decides to act and turns to Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White). Together they set out on a risky journey that ends with the social network’s most closely guarded secrets exposed.

The studio pitches it as a David-and-Goliath story, and the working title on set was simply Goliath. The screenplay draws on Horwitz’s series The Facebook Files in The Wall Street Journal.

The cast

The main roles are played by:

• Mikey Madison, an Oscar winner for Anora, as Frances Haugen;
• Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) as reporter Jeff Horwitz;
• Jeremy Strong (Succession) as Mark Zuckerberg;
• Bill Burr and Wunmi Mosaku as lawyers Charlie and Raya;
• Billy Magnussen, Betty Gilpin, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Portia Doubleday, Patrick Fischler and others.

Jesse Eisenberg, who played Zuckerberg in The Social Network, declined to return, saying he had “outgrown” the role. Strong built his performance on his own terms rather than following his predecessor’s interpretation, and he never shared a scene on set with Jeremy Allen White — their characters live in separate worlds.

How it was made

The project was announced in June 2025 as The Social Network Part II and got its current title that September. Filming took place in Vancouver from 22 October to 9 December 2025.

Sorkin brought back part of the first film’s team. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth also shot The Social Network, Alexandre Desplat wrote the score and Alan Baumgarten edited. The producers are Todd Black, Peter Rice, Stuart Besser and Sorkin himself, and Sony Pictures releases the film under its Columbia label.

In summer 2026, three months before release, Mikey Madison returned to Vancouver for additional filming. The film skipped the Venice festival. It runs 112 minutes and is rated R in the US for language.

The first screening

On 17 September Sorkin held the first public screening in Silicon Valley, practically on Meta’s doorstep, and took questions afterwards from journalist Kara Swisher.

There are no reviews yet. Industry watchers are cautious: they expect a solid, well-made film rather than a repeat of The Social Network, which won three Oscars and is regarded as one of the defining films of the 2010s. This is Sorkin’s fourth film as director after Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos.

When to watch

The film opens exclusively in cinemas on 9 October. Cast, stills and trailers are on the film’s page in our AMDB database.