FILM · 2010 · USA
The Social Network
- Directed by
- David Fincher
- Runtime
- 121 min
- Studio
- Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Scott Rudin Productions
148 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, Mark is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend.
148 Interesting Facts About The Social Network
Interesting Facts (51)
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As part of his research, Jesse Eisenberg read a copy of Mark Zuckerberg's college application. Zuckerberg's essay focused on his love of fencing, so Eisenberg took a couple of lessons. He quickly realized it affected his posture and the way he moved, and applied that knowledge to his portrayal of the character.
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The only scene Jesse Eisenberg had a problem with was the scene where Mark Zuckerberg films his friends jumping into a swimming pool from a rooftop. Originally Zuckerberg, instead of just filming it, was supposed to join in as well. Eisenberg couldn't imagine Zuckerberg having that kind of fun. By the time it came to film the scene he was relieved the script had been changed so he just observes it instead.
- #007
Aaron Sorkin directed the last shot of the films shoot. David Fincher announced he was leaving- Sorkin thought it was a joke until the production crew came up to him asking how to film it. It only amounted to a second's worth of footage anyway, but Sorkin got to announce the final wrap at the end.
- #008
On the DVD commentary, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence recount meeting the real Divya Narendra and taking him to meet Max Minghella, who plays him in the film. As a practical joke, Hammer and Pence told Narendra to talk in an Indian accent, as Minghella had been worried about his portrayal and wanted it to be as accurate as possible. Narendra played along, much to the horror of Minghella. Hammer recalls, "Max just turns white and he just starts going, 'I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!' And profusely apologized to him, for, like, thirty minutes."
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Armie Hammer, who played the Winklevoss twins, performed the face of only one of the brothers; the body scenes of the other were handled by Ralph Lauren model Josh Pence. To create the twin effect, Pence's face was digitally replaced with Hammer's. The two actors went through a 10-month 'twin camp' to capture each other's subtle movements and coordination.
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For the opening credits at the start of the film, as Mark runs to his dorm, David Fincher had actually planned to use Elvis Costello's song 'Beyond Belief.' Although everyone tried to talk him out of it, Fincher did not abandon his first idea until he heard composer Trent Reznor's track 'Hand Covers Bruise.'
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The scene in which Mark leaves the classroom and encounters the Winklevosses in the hallway was shot at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The classroom he leaves is in the Taper Hall of Humanities building, and the hallway where he meets the twins is in Grace Ford Salvatori Hall.
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Armie Hammer said he got the role only a week before shooting began. He stated that David Fincher wanted to find real twins for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, but faced with the difficulty of finding 1.95-meter-tall twins with both acting and athletic abilities, he waited until the last moment and agreed to have a single actor play both roles.
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In an interview with Vanity Fair in October 2010, the real Sean Parker said he had met Justin Timberlake once and that Timberlake wanted to get to know him better in order to prepare for his role in the film. Parker said that getting to know the real Sean Parker would be of no use to Timberlake, because the Parker in Aaron Sorkin's script had little to do with the real person.
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In Zombieland (2009), Jesse Eisenberg's character said that the best thing about the zombie apocalypse was being freed from the worry of updating his Facebook status. While Eisenberg was shooting that film, the directors and his fellow actors had to explain to him what a Facebook status was.
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Jesse Eisenberg later admitted that over the years he developed a much more negative view of the real Mark Zuckerberg's legacy and that he did not like being associated with him through his performance. For this reason, he refused to play Zuckerberg again in the sequel The Social Reckoning (2026).
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At one point Mark addresses the Winklevoss brothers as "Winklevi"; this is a humorous use of the Latin plural ending for names ending in s. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg is a good Latin scholar; he excelled in classics courses at Phillips Exeter Academy and took advanced courses such as Greek and Latin at Harvard.
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During the climactic confrontation between Zuckerberg and Saverin, Zuckerberg is seen wearing an Arm & Hammer T-shirt. Armie Hammer's great-grandfather Armand Hammer took his name from the "arm and hammer" logo of the Socialist Labor Party of America, of which his father was one of the leaders, but Armand had no connection to the founding or naming of the Arm & Hammer company. He failed to buy the brand and eventually served on the board of its parent company, Church & Dwight.
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In the FaceMash scene, when Mark writes the word 'facebook' in a blog post, a series of dots appears under the word, indicating a word the blogging software does not recognize. The word 'Facebook' is now a globally known term accepted in almost all software, such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
- #048
David Selby plays one of the Winklevoss twins' lawyers, named Gage. The fictional law firm Gage Whitney (sometimes referred to as Gage Whitney Pace) appears multiple times in the works of writer/director Aaron Sorkin; most notably in the series The West Wing (1999) as the law firm where Sam Seaborn worked before joining the Bartlet presidential campaign. The firm is also mentioned in Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), The Newsroom (2012) and Molly's Game (2017).
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Justin Timberlake was the only actor who met his real-life character (Sean Parker) prior to the founding of Facebook and this film. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence met their real-life characters, the Winklevoss twins after filming. The twins enjoyed Hammer and Pence's performance so much they attended a couple of screenings of the film.
Production Story (23)
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Armie Hammer claimed he was cast only a week before filming began. He claimed that David Fincher wanted to cast real twins as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and waited until the last minute before compromising on a single actor in a dual role after the difficulty of finding 6'5 twins who could both act and have the athletic capabilities for the role proved too difficult.
- #056
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz called the film a "dramatization of history ... it is interesting to see my past rewritten in a way that emphasizes things that didn't matter, (like the Winklevosses, who I've still never even met and had no part in the work we did to create the site over the past 6 years) and leaves out things that really did (like the many other people in our lives at the time, who supported us in innumerable ways)". According to Moskovitz: "A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things; the version in the trailer seems a lot more exciting, so I'm just going to choose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds.... The plot of the book/script unabashedly attacked [Mark Zuckerberg], but I actually felt like a lot of his positive qualities come out truthfully in the trailer (soundtrack aside). At the end of the day, they cannot help but portray him as the driven, forward-thinking genius that he is".
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During the opening credits sequence in the beginning of the film, when Mark is running back to his dorm, director David Fincher intended to use Elvis Costello's song "Beyond Belief". Even though everyone tried to talk him out of it, it wasn't until Fincher heard composer Trent Reznor's piece "Hand Covers Bruise" that he dropped his initial idea.
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At the D8 conference hosted by D: All Things Digital on June 2, 2010, host Kara Swisher told Mark Zuckerberg she knew he was not happy with the film being based on him, to which he replied, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive." Zuckerberg stated to Oprah Winfrey that the drama and partying of the film is mostly fiction, explaining "this is my life, so I know it's not so dramatic," and that he spent most of the past six years focusing, working hard, and coding Facebook. Speaking to an audience at Stanford University, Zuckerberg stated that the film portrayed his motivations for creating Facebook inaccurately; instead of an effort to "get girls", he says he created the site because he enjoys "building things". However, he added that the film accurately depicted his real-life wardrobe, saying, "It's interesting the stuff that they focused on getting right - like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own."
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In October 2010, the real Sean Parker told Vanity Fair that he actually once met Justin Timberlake and that Timberlake wanted to get to know him better for his preparation for his role in this movie. Parker then replied getting to know the real Sean Parker wouldn't help Timberlake at all, because the Parker from Aaron Sorkin's script has little to do with the real person.
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The real Lawrence Summers called the film's portrayal of his meeting with the Winkelvoss twins "fairly accurate". He went on to say "I've heard it said that I can be arrogant. If that's true, I surely was on that occasion. One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case. Rarely have I encountered such swagger, and I tried to respond in kind."
- #067
The script was written in 178 pages. The studio told Aaron Sorkin to cut it off at least 30 pages, but director David Fincher decided to keep all the pages. He told Sorkin to read all of them within two hours, and Sorkin succeeded. That's why the dialogues in the opening scene starts when the studio's logo is shown.
- #068
Jesse Eisenberg had planned to meet with Mark Zuckerberg as he wanted to get to know Zuckerberg to portray him accurately but was told by producer Scott Rudin to avoid doing such for legal reasons "on behalf of Sony's lawyers". The producers had initially refused to set up a meeting between Eisenberg and Zuckerberg.
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Andrew Garfield was originally asked to audition for Mark Zuckerberg but David Fincher decided he was too good at wearing his heart on his sleeve to play such an emotionally guarded character. Garfield found it helpful to go from reading for Mark to reading for Eduardo, because he felt that Eduardo tried to understand Mark through Mark's point of view.
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Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher wanted to do the movie based solely on a 14-page book proposal that somehow got leaked to Gawker.com right about the time 21 (2008) came out; the book hadn't even been written yet, and Ben Mezrich wound up writing it in a hotel room with Sorkin right next to him, handing Sorkin the chapters as they were finished.
Behind the Scenes (27)
- #075
On the DVD commentary, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence recount meeting the real Divya Narendra and taking him to meet Max Minghella, who plays him in the film. As a practical joke, Hammer and Pence told Narendra to talk in an Indian accent, as Minghella had been worried about his portrayal and wanted it to be as accurate as possible. Narendra played along, much to the horror of Minghella. Hammer recalls, "Max just turns white and he just starts going, 'I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!' And profusely apologized to him, for, like, thirty minutes."
- #076
According to David Fincher, Harvard wasn't very helpful to the crew when they wanted to get as realistic a portrayal as possible of campus life. They had refused filming there ever since significant physical damage to the campus during the shooting of Love Story (1970). Other schools had to fill in for it instead.
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The Winklevoss twins were both played by actor Armie Hammer. However, Ralph Lauren model Josh Pence played one of them strictly from the neck down. His face was digitally replaced with Hammer's to make them appear identical, as the two men are unrelated and look nothing alike. The two spent 10 months in twin boot camp to match one another's subtle movements and rapport.
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Before filming, Jesse Eisenberg created a false Facebook account for research. Eisenberg opened his account under the name of Peter Sagal, the host of the radio show Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! (2008), which Eisenberg was listening to at the time. He closed the account when filming wrapped.
- #087
Aaron Sorkin directed the last shot of the films shoot. David Fincher announced he was leaving- Sorkin thought it was a joke until the production crew came up to him asking how to film it. It only amounted to a second's worth of footage anyway, but Sorkin got to announce the final wrap at the end.
- #088
Some behind-the-scenes footage presented as a DVD extra reveals that during the filming of the "facemash montage" (which shows various groups of Harvard students perusing facemash and rating Harvard women against each other for relative attractiveness), one of the actors was instructed to say, "of course she's hot; she's Natalie Portman" while comparing two female Harvard students. That dialogue didn't make it into the finished film, but another oblique reference to Portman's presence on campus did (she is the movie star referred to during the deposition).
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As part of his research, Jesse Eisenberg read a copy of Mark Zuckerberg's college application. Zuckerberg's essay focused on his love of fencing, so Eisenberg took a couple of lessons. He quickly realized it affected his posture and the way he moved, and applied that knowledge to his portrayal of the character.
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The sequence where Mark leaves a classroom and meets the Winklevii in the hallway was filmed at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The classroom he exits is in a different building (Taper Hall of Humanities) from the hallway in which he meets the twins (Grace Ford Salvatori Hall).
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According to David Fincher, Harvard was not very helpful to the team, who wanted to portray campus life as realistically as possible. The school had not allowed film shoots since the serious physical damage that occurred on campus during the filming of Love Story (1970). For this reason, other schools stood in for Harvard.
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Characters & Cast (15)
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Jesse Eisenberg later admitted that over the years he developed a much more negative opinion of the real Mark Zuckerberg's legacy, and came to dislike being associated with him through his performance. It was this reason that he declined to play Zuckerberg again in the sequel, The Social Reckoning (2026).
- #104
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The only scene Jesse Eisenberg had a problem with was the scene where Mark Zuckerberg films his friends jumping into a swimming pool from a rooftop. Originally Zuckerberg, instead of just filming it, was supposed to join in as well. Eisenberg couldn't imagine Zuckerberg having that kind of fun. By the time it came to film the scene he was relieved the script had been changed so he just observes it instead.
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Divya Narendra said that he was "initially surprised" to see himself portrayed by the non-Indian actor Max Minghella, but also admitted that the actor did a "good job in pushing the dialogue forward and creating a sense of urgency in what was a very frustrating period." Although Minghella is mostly of European (Italian) and Chinese ancestry, he has some Indian heritage (1/16 Indian Jewish and 1/16 Parsee Indian).
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Andrew Garfield was originally asked to audition for Mark Zuckerberg but David Fincher decided he was too good at wearing his heart on his sleeve to play such an emotionally guarded character. Garfield found it helpful to go from reading for Mark to reading for Eduardo, because he felt that Eduardo tried to understand Mark through Mark's point of view.
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Justin Timberlake was the only actor in the film who had met the Sean Parker he portrayed before Facebook was founded. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence, on the other hand, met the Winklevoss twins after filming. The twins liked the performance so much that they attended several screenings of the film.
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After Mark finishes his coding marathon in his dorm room, he closes his eyes and slowly moves his head back and forth; Eduardo asks him, "Mark, are you praying?" In the DVD commentary, Aaron Sorkin explains that what Mark is doing is davening, that the word is of Yiddish origin and generally refers to prayer in Judaism, but specifically describes the head and body movements that Jews traditionally make while praying. In the commentary, Sorkin says that to make what Mark is doing clearer to the audience, he considered writing Eduardo's line as "Mark, are you davening?" instead of "Mark, are you praying?"
Easter Eggs & References (16)
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When Mark types the word 'facebook' in a blog post during the FaceMash scene, beneath the word appears a collection of dots indicating an unrecognised word on the blogging software. The word 'Facebook' is now an acceptable and globally known term on almost all pieces of software such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
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At one point, Mark calls the Winklevoss brothers the "Winklevi", facetiously using the Latin plural for nouns ending with an s. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg is quite the Latin scholar, having excelled in the classics while attending the Phillips Exeter Academy and taking advanced courses in subjects such as Greek and Latin while at Harvard.
- #128
During the climactic confrontation between Zuckerberg and Saverin, Zuckerberg can be seen wearing an Arm & Hammer T-shirt. Armie Hammer's great-grandfather Armand Hammer was named after the "arm and hammer" logo of the Socialist Labor Party of America, of which his father was a leader, but Armand had no involvement in the founding or naming of the Arm & Hammer company. He unsuccessfully attempted to buy the brand, and ended up serving on the board of its parent company Church & Dwight.
- #129
During one of the depositions, it is mentioned that the invention of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg "the biggest thing on a campus that included nineteen Nobel Laureates, fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, two future Olympians, and a movie star." One of the lawyers then asks, "Who was the movie star?" and the response is, "Does it matter?" This movie star was, in fact, Natalie Portman, who was enrolled at Harvard as a junior and senior when Mark Zuckerberg was a freshman. She invited Aaron Sorkin to a dinner party with her Harvard friends to provide him insider information on the school's social life at the time Facebook was created.
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David Selby plays one of the attorneys for the Winkelvoss Twins, named Gage. The fictional law firm Gage Whitney (sometimes referred to as Gage Whitney Pace) appears multiple times in the works of writer/director Aaron Sorkin, most notably as the law firm where Sam Seaborn was working before joining the Bartlet Presidential campaign on The West Wing (1999). The firm is also mentioned in Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), The Newsroom (2012), and Molly's Game (2017).
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Deeper Meaning (6)
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After Mark finishes the coding marathon in his dorm room, he then closes his eyes and slowly moves his head back and forth, and Eduardo asks him, "Mark, are you praying?" On the DVD commentary, Aaron Sorkin explained that what Mark was doing was davening, a word that comes from Yiddish and which generally refers to prayer in Judaism, but which also specifically refers to the type of head and body movements that Jews traditionally make while praying. Sorkin mentioned on the commentary that he considered writing Eduardo's line as "Mark, are you davening?" instead of "Mark, are you praying?" to make it clearer to the audience what Mark was doing.
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Career & Awards (6)
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In one of the lawsuits, it is said that the invention of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg "the biggest thing on a campus that included nineteen Nobel laureates, fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, two future Olympians and a movie star." When one of the lawyers asks "Who was the movie star?", the answer is "Does it matter?" That movie star was in fact Natalie Portman, who was a junior and senior at Harvard while Zuckerberg was a freshman. Portman invited Aaron Sorkin to a dinner with her friends at Harvard and gave him inside information about the school's social life during the period when Facebook was founded.
Life & Family (4)
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Despite the "Erica Albright" subplot and Mark's depiction in this movie as being generally maladroit with women, during much of the period covered by the film, the real Mark Zuckerberg was actually dating fellow Harvard student Priscilla Chan. Chan, who was one of the very first people ever to join Facebook (on February 5, 2004), graduated from medical school in 2012, the same year that she and Zuckerberg got married. They had their first child, daughter Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, in 2015.
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Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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