Sixteen years after The Social Network gave us the defining film about Facebook's birth, Aaron Sorkin is back with the defining film about its reckoning. The Social Reckoning opens in theaters today — and this time Sorkin isn't just writing, he's directing.
The film dramatizes the 2021 Facebook Files investigation: whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Oscar winner Mikey Madison, leaking internal documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), exposing how the algorithm funneled users toward hate groups and misinformation. Jeremy Strong takes on Mark Zuckerberg, with Bill Burr and Wunmi Mosaku rounding out a heavyweight cast.
Sorkin is clear: this isn't a sequel, it's a companion piece. The first film was about ambition and betrayal in a dorm room. This one is about what happens when the machine those kids built starts radicalizing the world — with threads reaching all the way to January 6.
Early reviews are split — 68% on Rotten Tomatoes against the original's 96%, with Madison's performance singled out as the reason to go. Fair or not, the conversation around this movie will be bigger than the movie itself. When the culture's most powerful company gets the prestige-drama treatment, everybody's got a take.
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