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Ahead of the release of “The Social Reckoning” on Oct. 9, director Aaron Sorkin is telling all on the film’s much-discussed reshoots, limited test screenings and why Trump is never named explicitly, despite the January
6 riot playing a part in the plot.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Sorkin explained that the reshoots, which took place after the trailer was released, had nothing to do with the initial mixed reactions and were simply to “make it better.” “We weren’t correcting anything,” he said. “There are two kinds of reshoots: one is the ‘Oh, we’re in trouble. We need to reshoot this.’ And that usually happens on $150 million superhero movies. The other kinds of reshoots are ‘Oh, we really like this movie. It’s good. Let’s make it better.’”
He explained that Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tom Rothman asked if there was anything he’d want to reshoot, if given the option. “Yeah, I would go back and rewrite and reshoot the whole thing,” said Sorkin, before clarifying that there were only two scenes he felt he could add something to. “And so he opened the checkbook and gave us three days of shooting.”
A follow-up to 2010’s “The Social Network,” “The Social Reckoning” follows former Facebook engineer and whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz ( Jeremy Allen White) as they expose the inner workings of Facebook. Their work culminated in “The Facebook Files,” a 2021 investigative series revealing Facebook’s harmful effects on teens and its role in spreading misinformation, including content linked to political violence.
However, despite the relevance of politics to the real-life events the film is based on and its recreation of Jan. 6, Trump is not mentioned by name in “The Social Reckoning,” a decision Sorkin stands by.
“I want to be clear: I was never asked to do that, to not mention Trump by name,” he said. “I turned in the script and a day or two later met with Tom Rothman, who was full speed ahead on it. And I promised him, unprovoked, that we would not see any Trump signage, no ‘Make America Great Again.’ The movie is about Facebook’s role and the rise of divisiveness, extremism, and hyper-partisanship in the country. It is not a red-blue thing, even though, obviously, it will be felt that way.”
Sorkin also revealed that a scene in which one of Facebook’s senior officials says, “I don’t know what that bitch thinks she’s doing,” had to be rewritten to remove the expletive, per the outside legal firm hired by Sony’s. “The lawyer said, ‘Unless you can show me that at one point a senior Facebook executive referred to an ex-employee as a bitch, you can’t do that.’ So it was that.”
On the subject of test screenings, Sorkin said that the studio “had a real concern for secrecy,” which meant the test screenings were each “70 people on the studio lot, all of them Sony employees.” “It is not a great polling sample,” he added.
