Aaron Sorkin Eyeing Jeremy Allen White & Mikey Madison for “The Social Network Part II”
Aaron Sorkin’s Social Network sequel might be close to a major development—Deadline reports that Sorkin is circling Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison to lead his sequel. Madison recently nabbed an Oscar for her mesmerizing turn in Sean Baker’s Anora, while White’s star has been rising for years as the Emmy-winning lead in The Bear, while also set to star as Bruce Springsteen in Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, which premieres on October 24. No formal offers have been submitted yet, but Deadline reports that White and Madison are Sorkin’s top choices.
Deadline first broke the story that Sorkin was planning on directing his own script for the sequel to his Oscar-winning 2010 film, which he wrote and David Fincher directed. That film, based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Millionaires,” starred Jesse Eisenberg as a young Mark Zuckerberg during his early years at Harvard, when he created the social networking site that would end up becoming the global colossus Facebook. The Social Network tracked the contentious birth of the site, with Zuckerberg facing legal challenges from the Winklevoss twins, who claimed he stole their idea, and from his co-founder, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), whom he boxed out of the business. Sorkin’s whip-smart script, Fincher’s masterful directing, and outstanding performances from the leads led to eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. The film won three, including Sorkin’s win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Incredibly, the version of Facebook that Sorkin, Fincher, and their cast and crew depicted was arguably a depiction of a messy but promising company whoes platform was, by design, becoming a exponentially growing social experiment—now, Sorkin would be working with material that covered the tumultuous years Facebook, and the world it helped create, has been enduring in the decade and a half since.
The new script will be based on the reporting by The Wall Street Journal‘s Jeff Horowitz in his explosive series, “The Facebook Files,” published in October 2021. This series was based on a trove of internal Facebook documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager at the company. Some of the explosive details included in Horowitz’s reporting were that Facebook (now Meta) was aware of the numerous harmful societal effects of its platforms, often downplaying those findings or failing to address them. The exposé revealed a company far more invested in growth than user safety. The exposé included reporting on how Facebook’s platforms had a harmful impact on teenage girls, exempted high-profile users from content moderation, and fueled misinformation and division with its algorithms.
No reporting has revealed who White and Madison would play, but speculation has it that White would be cast as reporter Jeff Horowitz, and Madison would play whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Sorkin has helmed a slew of films since The Social Network premiered, including Being the Ricardos, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and the underrated Molly’s Game. It’s unclear whether Eisenberg will reprise his role as Zuckerberg, although it seems likely he’ll appear in some capacity.
Featured image: L-r: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 9: Jeremy Allen White attends a dinner for the cast and producers of “The Bear” at Musso & Frank Grill on June 9, 2025, in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Jon/Getty Images for FX Networks); LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 16: Mikey Madison attends the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards at The Royal Festival Hall on February 16, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Lia Toby/Getty Images)
