Aaron Sorkin is making a sequel to The Social Network

Aaron Sorkin is all steam ahead for The Social Network sequel, which he will also direct as well as write.

The famed scribe has previously teased the possibility, but Deadline today reported the project is officially in development at Sony Pictures.

Sorkin wrote the 2010 film, for which he won an Oscar, that explored Mark Zuckerberg’s founding of the social media giant while a student at Harvard University, and the tussles between the future billionaire and the likes of early partners Sean Parker, the Winklevoss twins, and Edwardo Saverin.

The original film was based on Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires, and the follow-up will draw on The Wall Street Journal investigation, The Facebook Files, formed from a trove of internal documents from the tech company.

The series of articles detailed repeated instances in which Facebook was aware of its harmful impact on its users and social cohesion, but persisted in doing nothing or very little, even in the face of public shaming and government inquiries.

Examples include internal research, which showed Instagram was having a toxic effect on young girls’ mental health, and Zuckerberg’s resistance to fixing algorithmic changes that made users more angry lest any tweaks lead to a decline in engagement.

Last year, Sorkin intimated he was writing a movie about Facebook and its role in the 2021 January 6 riots by Trump-supporting insurrectionists who violently stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 US elections.

“I blame Facebook for January 6,” he said on The Town podcast. Asked to elaborate, he replied, “You’re (going to) need to buy a movie ticket.”

He added, “Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Because that is what will increase engagement and because that is what will get you to what they call inside the hallways of Facebook, the infinite scroll.

It looks as if the project he had referenced then will be this Social Network follow-up, which is expected to expand the focus beyond January 6 to Facebook’s wider impact on the world. It has more than three billion monthly active users globally.

It has been described as not a straight-up sequel. That means it could shift the point of view away from Zuckerberg, who was played by Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 film.

David Fincher had directed the original, but this time Sorkin will take the reins behind the camera too, having helmed films Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos since 2017.

The Social Network grossed $US224 million from a production budget of $US40 million, and in the 15 years since its release, has consistently been regarded as one of the best films of the 21st century. It was named the best film of 2010 by critics at The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and the Washington Post.