Eisenberg, Timberlake cast in Facebook movie ‘The Social Network’
Love it or hate it, Facebook is a phenomenon. It’s the social network that has managed to keep on growing while others around it have fallen by the wayside. It has seen off MySpace, stolen ideas off Twitter in order to kill the young pretender at birth, and now has 300 million users to show for it. But is that little lot enough to warrant and carry a movie?
When I first heard about the Facebook movie a few months ago, I was pessimistic whether it was really justified. Despite being a big fan of the site and of social networking in general, a movie based on one sounded truly bizarre. But I’ve slowly come round to the idea.
The movie came about when Sony Pictures asked Aaron Sorkin, best known for The West Wing, to write a movie about Facebook. The result is The Social Network, a movie focusing on how the site came to be. I personally think they should have called it Facebook: The Movie instead.
Based in part on The Accidental Billionaires, the film consequently looks at how Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Eduardo Saverin created the site from nothing and built it into what it is today – a hugely popular, important part of Silicon Valley and the Internet.
Variety is now reporting that the core cast has been assembled, with Jesse Eisenberg playing Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake playing Parker, and Andrew Garfield playing Saverin. Production on the picture is due to begin in Boston next month, with a move to Hollywood soon after. A 2010 release for the picture is tentatively expected.
The casting won’t do the film any harm as Eisenberg and Timberlake are big names, which are likely to appeal to the Facebook demographic. So, although the film may have had an inauspicious start and been mocked in certain quarter, it is now coming together very nicely.
Truth be told, I’m actually very interested in seeing the story of how Facebook came to be portrayed on the big screen. Which is exactly what Sorkin seems intent on doing. But it does beg the question of what is next – a film based on a tweet?
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