Mikey Madison, who won this year’s best actress Oscar for her performance in Anora, and Jeremy Allen White, who is elbowing for his third acting Emmy for The Bear come September, are circling the lead roles in Sony’s high-profile sequel to The Social Network.
Aaron Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for penning the 2010 movie, wrote the script and will direct the drama that is inspired by a series of articles Jeff Horwitz wrote for The Wall Street Journal known as The Facebook Files.
Insiders stress that no offers have been made and that the film is still in the development process, although the project is a top priority for the studio and moving fast. Sorkin has been meeting with actors and is packaging a cast and budget, which he will then show to the studio for final approval. Meetings with Madison and White have taken place and the Chess pieces are slowly coming together.
While the acclaimed 2010 drama focused on the making of the Facebook, now known as Meta, the story of the new feature will focus on how the company’s own reporting pointed to the negative effects its social media was having on teens and kids, how it knew misinformation was proliferating and causing violence, and how it contributed to the coup attempt of Jan. 6, 2021.
If offers and, indeed, dealmaking closes, Madison would play Frances Haugen, the data engineer-turned-whistleblower who went to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Wall Street Journal with her information. White would play the former WSJ tech reporter who leads the breaking of the Facebook files.
One source said the project would have shades of The Insider, the 1999 movie from Michael Mann that told of a whistleblower blowing the lid off the tobacco industry by talking to 60 Minutes. Another source said the project has shades of Spotlight, the 2015 movie that centered on reporters from the Boston Globe investigating child sex abuse by the city’s Roman Catholic clergy.
Sony had no comment.
Mikey Madison and Frances Haugen
Brendon Thorne/Getty Images; Peter Rae / Sydney Morning Herald/Getty Images
Sorkin, Todd Black, Peter Rice and Stuart Besser are producing the sequel.
David Fincher directed the original Social Network, which starred Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and earned eight Oscar nominations, winning three.
Madison received numerous accolades for her Anora work, earning multiple nominations and ultimately wins courtesy of the BAFTA Awards and the Academy Awards. Anora won five Oscars, best picture among them. Madison also memorably appeared in Scream (2022) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
She is due to shoot The Masque of the Red Death, a re-imagining of the creepy Edgar Allan Poe story from filmmaker Charlie Polinger, in early 2026. The horror project hails from A24, which will distribute worldwide, and Picturestart, which is producing. Earlier this year, she was in talks to star in Star Wars feature Starfighter, but those talks crumbled over financial reasons.
White has earned two Emmy wins for his work on FX’s The Bear and this fall will portray Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century’s true-life Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which chronicles the making of his album Nebraska. The drama is due to hit theaters Oct. 24.
Madison is repped by UTA, Authentic Talent and Sloane Offer. White is repped by WME and Entertainment 360.
