Aaron Sorkin’s film The Social – Il prezzo della verità explores whistleblower Frances Haugen’s leak of tens of thousands of internal documents from Meta in 2021, arriving in Italian cinemas on October 8 as a companion piece to The Social Network, style.corriere.it reported.
Why is Aaron Sorkin calling The Social a companion piece to The Social Network?
Sixteen years after charting the founding of Facebook, filmmaker Aaron Sorkin returns to the platform with The Social – Il prezzo della verità. According to style.corriere.it, Sorkin explicitly rejects the label of a sequel, describing the new release as a companion piece focused on the same obsession with a different protagonist. While the 2010 film directed by David Fincher examined the origins of the digital giant in Harvard dormitories, the new movie focuses on the individuals who attempted to halt its expansion, featuring cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth, who shot the original feature.
Who is Frances Haugen and how did she spark the Facebook Files?
Frances Haugen, a 42-year-old native of Iowa City, worked as a product manager at Facebook when she downloaded tens of thousands of internal documents in 2021, style.corriere.it reported. Haugen delivered the files to regulators, Congress—where she testified in person—and journalist Jeff Horwitz of the Wall Street Journal. The resulting reporting exposed that Meta understood the detrimental psychological impacts of its algorithms on teenagers yet chose not to intervene. Additional coverage from Like in a Movie notes that Haugen earned a degree in electrical and computer engineering from Olin College of Engineering in 2006, worked on Google’s ranking algorithms, and later completed an MBA at Harvard Business School before working at Yelp and Pinterest.
How did Jeff Horwitz and the Wall Street Journal break the story?
Jeff Horwitz transformed Haugen’s internal corporate cache into the widely known Facebook Files, providing concrete proof of platform safety failures. style.corriere.it reported that Horwitz later moved to Reuters as a tech investigations reporter based in San Francisco, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2026 for a subsequent investigation into Meta exposing how platforms exposed minors to scams and potentially harmful chatbots. In the film adaptation, Horwitz is portrayed by Jeremy Allen White, while Mark Zuckerberg is played by Jeremy Strong.
Frances Haugen publishes memoir and appears in film
What is Frances Haugen doing today?
Haugen published her memoir The Power of One in 2023, established the non-profit Beyond the Screen to monitor Big Tech, joined the Council for Responsible Social Media, and collaborates as a researcher with academic institutions in the United States and Australia, style.corriere.it reported.
Who stars in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social?
Mikey Madison, who won an Oscar for Anora, portrays whistleblower Frances Haugen in the film, while Jeremy Allen White plays journalist Jeff Horwitz and Jeremy Strong portrays Mark Zuckerberg, according to style.corriere.it.
When does the film open in theaters?
The Social – Il prezzo della verità releases in Italian cinemas on October 8, distributed by Sony, style.corriere.it reported.
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