Nearly every scene in the 2010 movie "The Social Network" features Mark Zuckerberg.
In this year's follow up, "The Social Reckoning," which is in theaters this week, Zuckerberg is a supporting character.
Rather than doing a deeper dive into the Meta CEO, the new film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, centers on then-Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), as they work to expose how the company knew about and failed to fix elements of its platforms that were causing harm. Zuckerberg, now played by Jeremy Strong, looms over the narrative, but doesn't interact directly with the protagonists.
"We knew Mark Zuckerberg had to be a part of it because there was no way to make the movie without it," producer Todd Black said. "We also knew we didn't want to make the movie Mark Zuckerberg centric."
That marks a major shift from the movie's predecessor, also penned by Sorkin, which offers a portrait of the young Zuckerberg as he creates Facebook in his Harvard dorm room and then grows it into a platform with a million users. That version of the tech founder, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, is spiky and motormouthed, eager to climb the Ivy League social ladder.
The Oscar-winning film, directed by David Fincher and based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires," was crucial in shaping the public image of Zuckerberg, painting him as an ambitious kid who lost his own friendships in the process of making a social-media phenomenon that valued connection.
Zuckerberg said in a 2014 Q&A that the movie "made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful." Zuckerberg has not yet made any public statements on "The Social Reckoning," and representatives for Meta declined to comment.
For "The Social Reckoning," Eisenberg did not return to the role. When Strong took on the part he aimed for complete verisimilitude.
On set, Strong, who is famous for his extensive preparation, maintained Zuckerberg's intonations even when cameras weren't rolling. Sorkin never saw him out of costume on set. Even though Zuckerberg is featured in less of the film than in "The Social Network," Sorkin said he feels that some of Strong's reactions, especially to the way the character takes an insult, are true to the subject.
"There are moments in Jeremy's performance where I feel like we get closer to Mark than we were even in 'The Social Network,' " Sorkin said.
Sorkin, however, said he has never met or spoken to Zuckerberg, though at the time of "The Social Network" he had access to people around him.
"This is just my imagination," he said.
Zuckerberg's evolution from upstart in sandals to business leader in gold chains, was not what made Sorkin want to follow-up the movie that won him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
What piqued Sorkin's interest was the story of Haugen and Horwitz, the latter of whom currently works for Reuters. (You can read the original Wall Street Journal investigation here.) Sorkin was specifically inspired when he learned how Haugen's concerns about social media's impact were shaped by losing a friendship with someone who had become interested in radical viewpoints online.
But Sorkin didn't want to leave Zuckerberg fully behind. Zuckerberg had to exist as a character. "There needed to be a human target of all of this," Sorkin said. "And with Mark it works because he is the company."
What Sorkin envisioned was an unusual structure for his movie. Zuckerberg largely exists outside of the narrative that follows Haugen and Horwitz. Instead, the movie repeatedly flashes forward to what Sorkin describes as a "one-act play" that takes place over the course of one day as Zuckerberg prepares for congressional testimony and his advisers coach him on his likability.
While Zuckerberg's function in "The Social Reckoning" is to stand in for Facebook as an entity, Sorkin isn't totally ruling out any further exploration of the man.
"Listen, maybe there'll be a part three where we return to inside Mark's head," he said.