Jesse Eisenberg Said No, Trump Is Never Named, and Critics Are Held Until Wednesday. Here Is What to Expect From The Social Reckoning.

Tomorrow is five years to the day since Frances Haugen sat in front of a Senate subcommittee and told it what Facebook knew about its own products. Two days before that, on October 3, 2021, she had revealed herself on 60 Minutes as the source behind The Wall Street Journal's "Facebook Files."

On Friday, Sony opens Aaron Sorkin's movie about it. The Social Reckoning arrives 16 years and eight days after The Social Network, the Facebook origin story Sorkin wrote for David Fincher, which opened at No. 1 and won him an Oscar. This time Sorkin directs, Mark Zuckerberg has a new face, and critics will not weigh in until Wednesday. Here is what we know.

The story: a whistleblower, a reporter, and January 6

Mikey Madison plays Haugen, a product manager on Facebook's civic integrity team who gathered tens of thousands of internal documents before she quit in May 2021. Jeremy Allen White plays Jeff Horwitz, the Journal reporter she took them to. Sony's synopsis describes the pair setting out on a dangerous journey that ends with them blowing the whistle on the company's most guarded secrets, and calls the film "a companion piece" to The Social Network.

Sorkin's real target is bigger than one leak. He first described the project on Matthew Belloni's podcast The Town in April 2024, where he said, "I blame Facebook for January 6," and argued the company had been tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Asked how the movie would handle the Capitol attack, he said: "You're going to need to buy a movie ticket."

Early viewers say the film builds to a riot sequence of five or six minutes. One name you will not hear is Donald Trump's. Sorkin told Politico that was his choice, not the studio's: "As soon as you saw anything 'Trump,' it would just become about something else."

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Is it a sequel? Not exactly, and Jesse Eisenberg said no

The new film is set more than a decade after the depositions that framed the first, and Zuckerberg is the link. Sorkin assumed Jesse Eisenberg would be back. "It never occurred to me that he wouldn't wanna do it," he told Entertainment Weekly. He spent a three-day weekend trying to change Eisenberg's mind, and a bigger offer was no help: "Money does not motivate Jesse. It's infuriating. If anything, money is a disincentive for him." Sorkin has said Eisenberg simply did not want to be conflated with Zuckerberg anymore.

So the part went to Jeremy Strong, in his third film for Sorkin after Molly's Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Strong, an Emmy winner for Succession and an Oscar nominee for playing Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, told The New Yorker Radio Hour that he reached out to Zuckerberg before playing him. "I was defending him a lot when we were making the film, to my director," he said. "My hope is that the film is a dialectic rather than a polemic."

The cast around them

Madison won Best Actress for Anora in March 2025, and this is her first film since. White, of The Bear, last shared a movie with Strong in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, where White played Bruce Springsteen and Strong played his manager, Jon Landau. Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), Betty Gilpin, and Billy Magnussen fill out the supporting cast.

What changed behind the camera

• Director: Sorkin himself, on his fourth film after Molly's Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Being the Ricardos. No Fincher this time.
• Cinematographer: Jeff Cronenweth, who shot The Social Network and earned an Oscar nomination for it, is back.
• Music: Alexandre Desplat, a two-time Oscar winner, takes over from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose Social Network score won the Oscar.
• Rating and length: R for language, 112 minutes. The Social Network was PG-13 and ran two hours.
• Budget: a reported $50 million, against the original's $40 million.

There was a legal gauntlet, too. Sorkin told The Playlist he understood Sony had received letters from Meta, and that the studio hired an outside law firm to fact-check every claim. He called what he had to leave out "agonizing," and would not say what it was.

What the first reactions say

The film skipped a Venice slot and premiered in London on September 29. The review embargo reportedly lifts Wednesday morning, two days before opening. A Wednesday embargo for a Friday release usually means a studio in no hurry to start the conversation.

Until then, the early word is mixed. One press viewer quoted by World of Reel said Madison and White carry the movie and Strong is solid in limited screen time, but faulted the flat visuals, a pushy Desplat score, and a riot sequence that looks cheap next to Chicago 7.

Most of the film looks like a very expensive TV episode. I'm glad it exists. I just didn't think it was very well made.An early press reaction, via World of Reel

The box office problem

The Social Network opened to $22.4 million in October 2010 and finished with $224.9 million worldwide. Nobody is forecasting a repeat. Boxoffice Pro puts The Social Reckoning's opening weekend at $6 million to $10 million, Box Office Theory at $8 million to $13 million, and World of Reel reports tracking of $4 million to $6 million. Other Mommy, the Jessica Chastain horror movie opening the same day, has a Boxoffice Pro range of $15 million to $25 million.

The weekend that just ended is a warning. Digger, another adult-skewing original with split reviews, is headed for what Deadline calls Tom Cruise's lowest opening in 19 years. Molly's Game, the one Sorkin-directed film that went wide in theaters before this, made $59 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. At $50 million, The Social Reckoning needs strong reviews and word of mouth to outlast its first weekend.

Should you go opening weekend?

If what you loved about The Social Network was the talk, the arguments across conference tables and the lines people still quote, the early word says Sorkin's dialogue and his two leads are intact. If it was Fincher's control, the cold precision of every frame, lower your expectations and read Wednesday's reviews before you buy a ticket.

Either way, rewatch the original first. As of this weekend, The Social Network streams on MGM+ and free with ads on Tubi, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is on Netflix, and Molly's Game is on Paramount+.

For everything else opening this month, see our October theatrical preview. And if you want a cleaner way to keep score, start with our movie tier list guide.

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