CULTURE

Jesse Eisenberg Is Totally Down With a The Social Network Sequel

And so are we.


"Louder Than Bombs" New York Premiere - After Party
Ben Gabbe

It’s been a bumpy nine years for Facebook since the 2010 release of The Social Network, in which Jesse Eisenberg helped tell the company’s origin story. A company built on the ethos of connectivity, has done more to divide than to unite. But with each passing scandal—and there have been many—fans of the original film can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever get a sequel. At this point, it’s no longer a question of whether or not there’s a story worth telling, as so many sequels often face (ahem, Big Little Lies). It’s now a matter of whether or not the team behind The Social Network is willing to reunite and expand on their beloved origin story.

One thing we do know, is that the film’s star, Jesse Eisenberg, is more than ready to reprise the role of Facebook’s fearless leader, Mark Zuckerberg. “Oh, yeah,” he told Indiewire recently. “To play a good role in a popular thing is very rare. This was an opportunity to play a complicated character that you’d normally play onstage or an art film, but on a big scale. For me, that was incredibly fortunate.” Unfortunately, Eisenberg admits that he has yet to receive a script from Aaron Sorkin, who penned the original. “Sorkin is a genius, and if he chooses to write about something, it’ll obviously be interested,” Eisenberg said. “But I am not aware of either the project, or even the current controversy of the company.”

Although the famously internet-averse Zuckerberg claims that he hasn’t been keeping up with Facebook’s ongoing privacy saga, not even he can avoid it entirely. “I just watched a little bit,” Eisenberg said of Zuckerberg’s controversial testimony before congress. “It’s funny, because a lot of friends who are on Facebook, they are increasingly paranoid about their data. But because I’m not on it, I feel less invested in the controversy of them selling data or whatever.”

Hopefully, Eisenberg will have to start doing some research sooner rather than later.

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