Aaron Sorkin’s Full Screenplay For ‘The Social Network’
EXCLUSIVE: With Sony Pictures’ permission, Deadline Hollywood presents Aaron Sorkin’s full screenplay herefor The Social Network. Also, my interview with this frontrunner for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar follows:
Aaron Sorkin set out to be an actor, but those early career plans were trumped when he began writing for the stage. In 1989, at the age of 28, he was named Outstanding American Playwright by the Outer Critics Circle for A Few Good Men. Just three years later, he wrote the screenplay for the film version which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. His subsequent success in film has included scripts for Malice (1993), The American President (1995), Charlie Wilson’s War(2007) and the upcoming Moneyball. As an Emmy-winning television writer and producer, he was behind critically acclaimedSports Night, long-running The West Wing, and the short-lived Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. But he has never been nominated for an Academy Award:
DEADLINE: This script about the behind-the-scenes of the founding of Facebook is technically an adaptation but not based on the actual book?
AARON SORKIN: Initially, I was given a 14-page book proposal that Ben Mezrich wrote for his publisher about these guys and the friction between them. The publisher wanted to get simultaneous film deals and took it to Hollywood and that’s how it ended up in my hands. And I said yes on page three. That’s the fastest I’ve ever said yes to anything. And it was because it’s set against this very modern backdrop of this very modern profession that I didn’t know very much about at all. It was a classic story of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, power, jealousy and class: things that Shakespeare and Chayefsky wrote about yet none of those guys was available so I have it.
