Aaron Sorkin has revealed he is writing a movie about the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol Building. During a live episode of The Town with Matt Belloni podcast, the film was teased as a potential sequel to The Social Network tracing the rise of online misinformation.
When asked what role Facebook and other social networks should play in “responsibly moderating our news media and thus our democracy,” Sorkin glanced at his publicist before pulling back the curtain on his next project.
“I’ll be writing about this. I blame Facebook for January 6th,” Sorkin said, adding that we’d need “to buy a movie ticket” to find out why he believes the social network played a crucial role in the coup attempt.
Sorkin continued by criticizing the social platform in a more general sense, saying, “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible because that is what will increase engagement. That is what will get you to what they call inside of the hallways of Facebook the ‘infinite scroll.’”
He went on to blame Mark Zuckerberg for the edict: “There is supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth. If Mark Zuckerberg woke up tomorrow morning and realized that there is nothing you can buy for $120 billion that you can’t buy for $119 billion, so how about if I make a little less money and tune up integrity and tune down growth?”
Sorkin demurred to give his publicist “a break” when Belloni tried to get confirmation that the film would be a “sequel of sorts” to The Social Network, However, Belloni described the movie as “a quasi-sequel” in a tweet promoting the podcast episode.
Listen to the full podcast below. The discussion begins around the 17:15 mark.
Released in 2010, The Social Network starred Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg and depicted the founding of Facebook. Written by Sorkin, it landed him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Sorkin’s most recent film was 2021’s Being the Ricardos, which centered around the relationship between I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz