Entertainment

Aaron Sorkin’s New Film Focuses on Facebook Whistleblower, Lacks Dramatic Impact

By Nicholas Barber

Aaron Sorkin’s latest film, released on 9 October in U.S. and U.K. cinemas, follows a whistleblower who exposes Facebook’s internal secrets. The 1 hour 52 minute drama stars Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, Mikey Madison as Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Allen White as investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz. Strong’s portrayal of Zuckerberg is described as a dead‑eyed, unsmiling executive, a departure from Jesse Eisenberg’s petulant depiction in the 2010 film The Social Network. The story centers on Horwitz, who moves to the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco office in 2019 and seeks to uncover what is happening at Facebook. He eventually contacts Haugen, a former member of Facebook’s Civic Integrity team, who reveals that users are being pushed toward extremist groups and shares other concerns she discovered while working at the company.

Sorkin, who also directed the film, attempts to build tension by intercutting between two timelines: one following Horwitz and Haugen’s conversations, and the other showing Zuckerberg rehearsing for a Senate hearing. The film presents data on Facebook’s impact on mental health, such as internal research indicating that 32% of teenage girls with body‑related anxieties felt worse after using Instagram. However, the narrative is criticized for lacking conflict and urgency, with no real threats to the characters and no interaction between Zuckerberg, Horwitz, and Haugen.

The film’s reception notes that while it tackles the broader issue of social media’s influence, it fails to deliver the dramatic momentum or transformative effect seen in earlier works about tech giants. It is positioned among a recent wave of films about wealthy industrialists, but is described as the least ambitious of the group.

The cast includes Jeremy Strong, Mikey Madison, and Jeremy Allen White. The runtime is 1 hour 52 minutes. The film was released on 9 October in U.S. and U.K. cinemas.