The 2010 film ‘The Social Network’ put Mark Zuckerberg in nearly every scene. The follow-up keeps him away from its heroes. ‘The Social Reckoning’ is in theaters this week. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed it. He parks the man who built Facebook off to the side, where aides coach him on how to seem likable before Congress.
The new film belongs to two other people. Jeremy Allen White plays Jeff Horwitz, who was a Wall Street Journal reporter at the time. Mikey Madison plays Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower. Esther Zuckerman describes the plot in the Journal's Review section. The pair work to expose what the company knew about harmful features of its platforms and failed to fix. Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg. His shadow falls across their whole story, but he never deals with them face to face. Producer Todd Black says the movie couldn't be made without Zuckerberg, and the team didn't want it to be about him. One note the reader deserves. The Journal is writing about a film whose hero is its own former reporter. Horwitz now works for Reuters.
The first film was a different animal. David Fincher directed it from Sorkin's script, based on Ben Mezrich's book ‘The Accidental Billionaires.’ Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg builds Facebook in a Harvard dorm and grows it to a million users, spiky and fast-talking all the way. The film won Sorkin an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, and it fixed the public's picture of the man. In 2014 Zuckerberg said the movie “made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful.” He has said nothing about the new one. Meta (META) declined to comment.
Why he stays in the picture
Sorkin wasn't drawn by the founder's growth into an executive. Haugen and Horwitz hooked him. Haugen's worries took shape when she lost a friendship to extreme views online. Still, Sorkin kept Zuckerberg, because the story needed a human target, and “with Mark, it works because he is the company.” So the film cuts again and again to a one-act play. It covers one day. Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress while advisers coach him on his likability. On set, Strong kept Zuckerberg's voice between takes, and Sorkin never saw him out of costume. Sorkin thinks some of Strong's reactions, like how the character takes an insult, come closer to the real man than the first film did. Yet he has never met or spoken to Zuckerberg. “This is just my imagination,” he says. He won't rule out a part three.
Our read
This is Investments/Risk (IN04). Sorkin's reason for keeping Zuckerberg in the film is also a portfolio lesson. When the founder is the company, the stock carries the person. His hearings, his moods and now his movies ride along with it. A film in theaters this week is headline risk no spreadsheet prices. The paper prints no box office, no review score and no share-price move tied to the film, and we won't invent one. The right response to that kind of risk is boring. Own the name at a weight you set in daylight, and leave it alone when the news cycle turns. Meta is held at weight in 20 books; nothing added, nothing trimmed.
The check for your own accounts is simple. Find the biggest single stocks you own and ask whether the founder is the company. If so, make sure the weight is one you could hold through a bad year of headlines. A movie is weather. You don't go looking for the umbrella once the rain starts. Set the weights at your review and let the film be a film.