This article was published on May 29, 2020

It’s time for a sequel to The Social Network and Quentin Tarantino should direct it


It’s time for a sequel to The Social Network and Quentin Tarantino should direct it

Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino revealed in a recent interview that he believes The Social Network is the best film of its decade. He’s wrong. Space Boobs in Space is the best film of the 2010s.

Space Boobs is a perfect film, it told the whole story. The Social Network, on the other hand, has plenty of room for improvement (2010? Ha, those were the innocent days for social media). That’s why I think it’s time for a sequel. And since Tarantino’s such a biiiig fan, he should direct.

Don’t get me wrong, David Fincher is a legend (he brought us Se7en, ’nuff said) but I think the next chapter in the Facebook saga calls for a level of character study that only the mind behind Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained, and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood can bring out.

For the uninitiated, The Social Network is a film about the rise of Facebook. It’s a riveting story with an incredibly talented cast and crew. Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) turned Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires into a cinematic masterpiece and actor Jesse Eisenberg, who played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, put on a top-notch performance that should have netted him an Academy nod.

Tarantino’s comments come from an interview with French news media source Premiere where he said:

It’s ‘The Social Network,’ hands down…It is number one because it’s the best, that’s all! It crushes all the competition.

Eisenberg said he’d be down for a sequel last year. There’s a pretty good chance that dozens of agents and executives have spent the time since testing the waters, but to the best of our knowledge nothing concrete’s arisen.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened though, after all the Cambridge Analytica saga alone is worth a trilogy. Who do you think should play Sheryl Sandberg? I’d cast Sarah Paulson from “American Horror Story.”

I would, however, be very surprised if Tarantino actually was attached to any future projects related to The Social Network. Last I heard he was supposedly done making movies after his 10th film (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, since he counts both Kill Bill volumes as separate flicks).

Still, it’s fun to imagine Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Buscemi, or other Tarantino film regulars playing important figures in the Facebook story (Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dorsey!). But it’s little more than an exercise in fan fiction. Unless Sorkin and Fincher have no interest in returning (and the original film made a quarter billion at the box office, so let’s assume they would) a film studio would be ludicrous to tap anyone else for a sequel.

But that won’t stop me from wishing for a Tarantino-stylized version. Imaginary spoiler alert: it would end with Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg finally revealing he’s an android as former Facebook AI Research Director Yann LeCun (played by Mark Ruffalo) laughs maniacally while staring directly at the camera. Then everyone would cut off each other’s heads with samurai swords as a 1960s malt-shop pop hit plays.  Fade to black.

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