Aaron Sorkin's Facebook

I'm not a fan of Aaron Sorkin's work at the best of times. After all, the man's biggest contribution to culture has been basing a TV series around a collection of "walk and talk" scenes. That's not to say that he's the antichrist. The West Wing was a well crafted show and his screenplays for A Few Good Men and Charlie Wilson's War were undeniably impressive. But, when he stays away from politics, his work isn't quite as good. Sports Night was a terrible excuse for comedy and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was an embarrassing failure made all the more apparent by the simultaneous success of 30 Rock. Sorkin's bit off more than he can chew in the past and choked, but nothing has ever seemed as poised to fail as his new movie.

Sometime in the next few years Aaron Sorkin's Facebook: The Movie will be hitting screens. That's right, the man who brought political drama to primetime network television will be making a film about the world's most popular social networking website. There's no denying how quickly facebook has infiltrated North American culture, but is a movie really necessary? And even if it is does a talent like Sorkin really need to be wasted on such a project? In Hollywood the answer to these questions is a resounding "yes." I just vomited a little bit in my mouth.

The one good piece of news is that Sorkin won't be attempting to recreate the facebook experience cinematically (although it would be great to see a high tension "poking" sequence). Instead his film will be about the three university pals (Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes) who transformed facebook from a cool idea derived from a night of college binge drinking into a $16 billion business. Even so, this project seems like a bad idea. I guess Sorkin likes piles of money. I can't think of any other reason why he would try to tackle this project.

Click here for more info on this embarrassing project.