Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, a “companion piece” to David Fincher’s beloved The Social Network (2010), is tracking for a dismal $8 million debut, far under it’s predecessor’s $22 million opening.
“The Social Reckoning, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is targeting a debut of $7 million to $8 million in North America. Those projections are dramatically behind the studio’s first Facebook drama, 2010’s The Social Network, which opened almost exactly 16 years ago to $22 million, not adjusted for inflation,” Variety reported on Wednesday.
The original went on to pull in an impressive $224 million globally, launching the careers of Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, and winning four Oscars. Neither David Fincher nor Jesse Eisenberg nor Trent Reznor will be returning for the Aaron Sorkin-directed “sequel,” and fans have noticed the dip in quality since the trailer first released. The film will chronicle the work of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in the early 2020s.
Due to the preponderance of cringe-worthy lines (“she’s disrupting!”) and a cheap callback to Trent Reznor’s Academy Award-winning score as a bookend, the trailer was poorly received upon its first release in June, with many fans calling it a cheap imitation at best or “cringe” slopfest at worst. While some appreciated seeing actor Jeremy Strong (replacing Jesse Eisenberg) employ an uncanny Mark Zuckerberg impression, people felt his lack of resemblance to the real Facebook co-founder took them out of the experience.
“Every line of this trailer will have you cringing harder than the one before it right up until the last one, at which point you will actually laugh out loud,” said one X user at the time.
“Looks like an SNL sketch,” said another.
Reviews for the film have thus far been mixed, with a 63 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, putting it in the watchable-but-not-great category – a death sentence for a follow-up to what many considered one of the best American films of the 2010s.