A companion piece set in the present

The Social Reckoning, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is now in theaters, with reviews published on 9 October 2026. NPR calls it a companion piece rather than a sequel to The Social Network, the 2010 film that won three Oscars and chronicled the origins of Facebook. Where that film covered the invention of the platform, this one focuses on where the company stands today, under the name Meta. Jeremy Allen White plays the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, Mikey Madison plays Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg. A second strand takes place on a single day, when Zuckerberg prepares for congressional hearings, with a crisis public relations strategist named Raya (Wunmi Mosaku) coaching him on his answers.

The Haugen leak

The film dramatises the 2021 leak by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer. According to The New York Times, she shared more than 20,000 internal documents, research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations with Horwitz. Those papers became the basis for a series the Journal published in 2021 under the title "The Facebook Files". inews reports that after trying and failing to raise concerns internally, Haugen started leaking stories to Horwitz. It also reports that she calculated that 64 per cent of people who joined extremist Facebook groups had been sent there directly by the company's own algorithm. Facebook's response, as the Times describes it, was to argue that the documents had been stolen and presented a distorted view of its research, while Zuckerberg posted an open letter on the platform. NPR's review asks whether the film will join the canon of great films about investigative journalism.

Sorkin on the approach

Sorkin explained his narrowing of the material in an interview with the Times. He said he had concentrated on two issues rather than every grievance against the company. He named Facebook's refusal to fact-check political ads and an algorithm change that, in his account, feeds users content meant to make them angry. Sorkin also told The Irish Times that fans had asked him for a follow-up for years, and that he found his hook in the 2021 leak.

“I didn't want to make this about every Facebook issue that there is. I think if you make it about everything, it's sort of the same as making it about nothing.”

Critics and the Meta backdrop

Reviewers differ on the execution. The Times' critic praised the pairing of White and Madison as natural underdog heroes and wrote that it is satisfying to watch David take on Goliath. inews describes the film as dark and tense, with the feel of a horror film that is also a documentary about users' own lives. La Razón criticises a rigid narrative structure and a flat visual approach, and argues that the film leans too heavily on an old-fashioned idealism. The film's release comes against a legal backdrop. SRF reports that 29 US states sued Meta, alleging its platforms were addictive and that psychological harm was accepted, and that an August settlement followed in the billions. La Razón puts the settlement at 18 billion dollars and says Meta agreed to it less than two months before its review.