It has been fifteen years since the release of The Social Network (2010), a biographical drama directed by David Fincher, and adapted by Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires. The film depicts the conception and early days of Facebook, interspersed with flash forwards to Mark Zuckerberg (who needs no introduction) and co-founder Eduardo Saverin, amidst a tension-brimmed lawsuit filed against Zuckerberg. Set to an Oscar-winning soundtrack that underscores the film with an ominous ambience, the film portrays the seeming antihero Mark, while coming back to the same question: how far can, and will, one go in pursuit of a wider social network?

Commenting on the film, the real-life Mark Zuckerberg said he ‘wished that nobody made a movie of [him] while [he] was still alive’. Fincher and Sorkin do so with adept visual and narrative direction, albeit having taken artistic liberties. Drawing from Mezrich’s account, we see the company’s early work culture encased within a glamourised and prodigal, typical out-of-college, frat-house aesthetic. Parties with teenage girls and drugs have been described as ‘fiction’, as well as Mark and Eduardo’s attempts to enter Harvard’s elite social clubs. Besides such fictionalisations, the film’s key takeaway seems to be that the ‘megalomaniac’ Mark Zuckerberg, who refuses introspection, will inevitably grow his social network – his company and his companions – and alongside this, his feeling of hollowness. 

Facebook’s relevance as a leading social media platform has since waned, and in many ways it is hard to connect present-day Zuckerberg and his ‘Meta’ exploits to Fincher’s immortalised delineation of the multi-billionaire tech mogul. It has been intimated this will be resolved by the film’s sequel, The Social Reckoning, again written by Sorkin, as well as directed. It is to be released in October next year. Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, against his wishes, this will mark his second time being the muse of a biopic while he is ‘still alive’.