Willingness for a new venture has already been ventilated by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin

Around 2010, the director David Fincher – in partnership with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin – achieved something truly special when they released the movie The social network. The production, with a biographical perspective on the creation process of Facebook by Mark Zuckerbergpresented a cohesive narrative that was able to explore very well how the desire to belong to a group encouraged the young programmer in the development process.

Despite being aligned or not with reality, even more in the negative way as Mark was portrayed, the film had a very high production value in many respects. Not only for the direction and dialogues, but also for the traditionally dark photography of Jeff Cronenweth and the musical composition signed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

As a result, it was among the favorites in the main categories of the Oscars 2011, becoming one of the most beloved works in the filmography of Fincher; however, the story does not end there. Evidently, the billionaire’s life continued to collect new controversial moments in the period after the one addressed in the film (which was not only the creation of Facebook but his breakup with his partner and friend Eduardo Saverin).

The more Zuckerberg’s influence grows, the greater his loneliness.

It is then that Aaron Sorkin, in recent times, has returned to air whenever possible the desire to make a sequel. The screenwriter has made inroads into the field of direction, and his most recent project, The Chicago 7was nominated for an Oscar 2021, the question soon arises if he would be willing to write and direct this idea.

The director, in response, always maintains the idea that his desire for a sequel The social network involves the return of David Fincher to the direction, consequently Jesse Eisenberg in the main role, in order to maintain a qualitative unity with the original work.

Amidst the exercise of theorizing which moments can influence the creative decision of the sequence, is the testimony given by Zuckerberg at the US Congress that most suggests a dramatic appeal. Around 2019, the businessman was summoned to testify before the country’s legislative body about Facebook’s security policies.

Zuckerberg’s testimony at the congress could be the base material for the sequel

The intention was to determine how safe the service’s mechanisms were against external interference, more specifically Russian pressure. This fear dates back to the period of federal investigations into alleged foreign manipulations in the 2016 elections, when the Republican Donald Trump defeated the democrat Hillary Clinton.

Aiming at maintaining the, until then, upcoming 2020 elections, senators questioned Zuckerberg for almost 10 hours about how the data of 87 million users, supposedly confidential, was sold to Cambridge Analytica. Hired by the campaign team of Donald Trumpthe data company used this information to build a voter profile and plan an aggressive campaign to collect votes.

The information came on March 17, 2018, when Cambridge Analytica’s own employee, Christopher Wylie, denounced the operation to media outlets such as the New York Times and the Guardian. The scandal quickly snowballed away from the threat to the integrity of the electoral process and into the territory of how much companies collect information from users and eventually pass it on to third parties.

The aforementioned Sabbath Zuckerberg in the Senate there were curious situations, such as the billionaire’s evasions regarding the transfer of user information and mechanisms to guarantee privacy, as well as the evasions regarding the answers to other questions.

At the same time, as raised by Andrew Rossow in the article Mr. Zuckerberg Goes To Washington: The Climb Up To Capitol Hill for Forbes, many of the senators who conducted the inquiries demonstrated limited knowledge about how a social network, and the internet in general, operates; raising the idea that the questions had much closer links to a clash between generations than to security issues.

Such a debate provides very fertile soil for Sorkinpossibly together with Fincher, examine how user privacy data has become an extremely valuable commodity in the information age; on how they can undermine democratic processes and nebulous dealings with companies such as Cambridge Analytica.