Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning reaches theaters on October 9 with critics divided over whether Facebook’s second act earns a film of its own, while Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a drama built around OpenAI chief Sam Altman, is collecting the warmer notices. That split is the framing Entertainment Weekly put on its own coverage of the two releases.
Sorkin’s film, from Sony Pictures, picks up where The Social Network left off and turns to what Facebook became. The Associated Press reports that it centres on whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, a former Facebook data scientist who told Congress in 2021 that the company tuned its algorithm to put profit ahead of public safety. Meta declined to comment to the AP.
The first wave of critic reactions was rounded up by Variety, which found them running from positive to mixed. One critic called it a “good, just not great film.” Sorkin, for his part, has been explicit about what he set out to make. In an interview with the AP, he drew the line between the two pictures himself:
“‘The Social Network’ was about the invention of Facebook.”
Aaron Sorkin, speaking to the Associated Press
This one, by the AP’s account, is about what the platform became and its role in extremism and division.
The comparison nobody could avoid is with David Fincher’s 2010 original. Jeremy Strong now plays Mark Zuckerberg in place of Jesse Eisenberg, and Alexandre Desplat takes over scoring duties from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, according to film blog World of Reel. Social media got there first. When the trailer dropped, users on X and TikTok called Strong’s turn “uncanny”, per KTAL, while others asked whether the film needed to exist at all.
The money side is less forgiving. World of Reel puts the budget near $50 million against an opening-weekend tracking range of $4 million to $6 million. Prediction market Kalshi was pricing a 69% Rotten Tomatoes score ahead of the review embargo lifting. Kalshi is not affiliated with the film or Sony.
Artificial has had a rougher road to screens than its reception suggests. Amazon MGM Studios dropped the nearly finished $40 million film earlier this summer, months after Amazon announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI, and NEON bought it after a bidding process, the AP reported on June 30. Amazon said then that the film would “be better served if it were released by a different studio.” NEON has said it will release the film this year and compete in the Oscar race. Andrew Garfield plays Altman in a story that follows the days around his 2023 firing and reinstatement as OpenAI’s chief executive.
Taken together, the two films put the founder-CEOs of Meta and OpenAI on screen in the same fall, a pairing the AP’s fall preview described as part of a wider run of films taking aim at tech moguls. For startup founders watching from Delhi or Bengaluru, the useful signal is how quickly audiences now treat a founder’s conduct as public drama rather than business news. Friday to Sunday will show whether that appetite extends to Sorkin’s version, or only to the one with better reviews.
