The Social Reckoning's First Reactions Praise the Cast and Fault the Filmmaking as Tracking Points to a $4-6 Million Opening

Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to The Social Network opens October 9. People who have seen it say Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White carry it, and that it looks like television.

The Social Reckoning opens in U.S. theaters on October 9, and the first word from people who have seen it is consistent: the performances work, the filmmaking around them is flat. World of Reel, which has been collecting reactions since a private press screening in late September and a gala screening in London on September 29, summarizes the consensus as "rather mid." Full reviews have not been published yet, so there is no Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic score to report.

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The film is Aaron Sorkin's companion piece to The Social Network, which he wrote and David Fincher directed in 2010. This time Sorkin directs his own script. It follows Frances Haugen, the Facebook employee played by Mikey Madison who in 2021 leaked internal documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White. Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg, with Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin and Billy Magnussen in support. It runs 112 minutes.

The praise goes to the leads. The press member whose account World of Reel published on September 28 says Madison and White "carry the movie," and describes Strong as good in limited screen time. The same viewer's verdict on the whole is the line that has travelled: "I'm glad it exists. I just didn't think it was very well made."

The complaints are about craft, and they are specific. That account says "most of the film looks like a very expensive TV episode," that Alexandre Desplat's score is "overused, pushing and pushing in scenes where the actors already had things under control," and that a five-to-six-minute recreation of the January 6 Capitol riot "looks cheap" next to the riot scenes in Sorkin's own The Trial of the Chicago 7. The film argues that Facebook's algorithm fed extremism and that the riot was partly a product of the platform. Desplat replaces Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who scored the 2010 film, while Jeff Cronenweth, who shot The Social Network, returns as cinematographer.

One difference from the first film is settled. The Motion Picture Association rated The Social Reckoning R for language; The Social Network was PG-13. In practice that limits the audience under 17 to those who come with an adult, which matters less for a talk-driven legal drama than it would for most releases.

The commercial outlook is weak. World of Reel reports that the film is tracking for an opening weekend of $4 million to $6 million, against a production budget of $50 million. It also arrives on a crowded date: Universal's horror film Other Mommy and the Western remake Angel and the Badman open the same day, and Verity, which took first place this weekend, will be in its second week. Tracking is an estimate made before reviews, and a strong critical reception could still move it.

For anyone deciding whether to go, the early reactions suggest a clear split. If you are interested in the Facebook Files story and in watching Madison, White and Strong work through Sorkin's dialogue, the people who have seen it say that part delivers. If what you loved about The Social Network was how it looked, sounded and moved, this is a different kind of film from a different director. A full review with scores will follow once critics' reviews are out.

Original coverage: The Social Reckoning: early reactions and box office tracking