David Fincher accepts Aaron Sorkin's friend request for FACEBOOK?

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Details began to emerge yesterday that David Fincher's next movie post-Oscar nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might be in the world of online social networking. Variety has him in "advanced talks" with Columbia Pictures to make The Social Network, which is the Facebook movie that Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War, A Few Good Men) has been scripting and we spoke about in August. The movie will cover the creation of the online phenomenon in 2004 and the life of Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg (so it won't be a movie about people poking friends). It will be an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's upcoming non fiction novel The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. It doesn't surprise me at all that this movie is coming from Mezrich's blueprint, as I mentioned back in August the story potential is just the same as it was for 21, which was based on his memoir Bringing Down the House. Another connection is that Kevin Spacey and Scot Rudin have crossed over to produce this movie too so you can begin to get a grasp of what this film is going to be like. But what interest for Fincher? What is it about this material that appeals to him, because it's completely on a different level to his past filmography?