Controversial from the start! In the years before Facebook became little more than a lightning rod for criticism, the social media platform and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg were the subject of the 2010 film The social network.
Jesse Eisenberg starred as Zuckerberg in the film, based on The Accidental Billionairesa 2009 book by Ben Mesrich. The project followed Zuckerberg as he created Facebook and resisted lawsuits surrounding the company.
The social network won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Film Editing at the 2011 Academy Awards. The film’s eight Academy Award nominations included Best Picture and Best Actor for Eisenberg. The 2011 Golden Globe Awards also presented trophies for Best Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score.
Despite critical acclaim, the film received backlash from the businessman who inspired it. “I haven’t spent much time thinking about this movie in a while,” Zuckerberg noted during a Facebook Live Q&A in November 2014. there. It was a very interesting experience watching a movie that was supposed to be about my life… supposedly.
The CEO then claimed that some aspects of the film were fabricated. “I think the reality is that writing code and building a product and then building a company is actually not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie out of,” he said. “So you can imagine a lot of things that they probably had to beautify and make up. If they were actually making a movie, it would have been of me sitting in front of a computer coding for two hours straight, which probably wouldn’t have been such a good movie and these guys, I think, want to win prizes and sell tickets.”
Zuckerberg added that he wasn’t impressed with the plot because “they just made up a bunch of stuff that I found a little hurtful” rather than focusing on his mission to connect the world through Facebook.
The entrepreneur then revealed that he had only met Eisenberg once when he Saturday Night Liverecalling, “I think he was a little scared to meet me after his performance, but I tried to be nice.”
Although Eisenberg received rave reviews from most, he confessed years later that he felt detached from the role. “The social network was just a bigger movie with more specific expectations,” he told the Guardian in June 2016. “And so, as an actor, you’re more aware of those expectations, and it necessarily feels less personal. Even though it’s high quality, which of course it was, you just feel like it’s impossible to have that real connection.
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Scroll down to see where the cast of The social network finished after the movie.
