If you haven’t heard, Columbia Pictures is coming out with a new movie this Fall about the creation story behind Facebook. Today they released the first movie poster for it. The movie titled, The Social Network, will not be the first place this story has been told. The film is based on a book written by Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. Personally, I am a fan of Ben Mezrich’s works. I enjoyed Rigged, and Bringing Down the House, and heard good things about Ugly Americans. When I saw this Facebook book in Barnes and Nobles I really thought it was going to be an awesome read. My opinion, worst book he ever wrote. I think it was the style that the book was written that bothered me more then the actual story he was telling. Nonetheless, I am left skeptical for this movie. I do believe that if Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher do this movie properly, there is a good film in here somewhere. As you can see from the image after the jump, the movie has started off well because choosing Jesse Eisenberg to play Mark Zuckerberg looks to be a great choice. Although I was kind of excited for an announcement of Michael Cera to play Mark, I think Jesse is more realistic.
For those of you that never read Accidental Billionaires, or know nothing of the Facebook creation story, below is a brief summary of the book. They sexy it up a bit, but as you can see, there is an interesting movie concept in there. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with.
The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends – outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.
Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance – and sexual success – was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.
Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university’s computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus – and subsequently crashing the university’s servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.
What followed – a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers – makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.
