Well, the full theatrical trailer is out for the much anticipated film ‘The Social Network’. The film is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book: The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (Amazon Associates link). As you can see from the embedded trailer, it stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as Napster cofounder Sean Parker.
It remains to be seen whether the film will be any good, or whether it will be a hit with critics and the public. No surprises for guessing whether Mark Zuckerberg will like it or not! I’ll certainly reserve any judgment until I actually see it. On paper the film seems to have quite a bit going for it so far. It’s directed by (previously Oscar nominated) David Fincher, who has directed such films as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Panic Room, Fight Club and Se7en. According to IMDB, also in pre-production is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That said, direction is one thing, the writing has to be really good too.
Surprisingly, the film has been chosen by The New York Film Festival to be its opening night film. The New York Film Festival is known for not choosing mainstream American films, so that’s certainly a vote of confidence. The selection committee chair and program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center apparently said that ‘The Social Network’ is the rare film that “powerfully captures the spirit of its time”.
Going by evidence in the trailer, the film doesn’t shy away from dealing with Facebook’s widely discussed (especially in the tech media) privacy issues. And as an aside, I think the choice of soundtrack for the trailer is brilliant. It’s a version of Radiohead’s Creep by Belgium girls choir Scala.
The trailer certainly does its job of making me want to see it (as if I was ever not going to). How about you, are you going to see it? It’ll be interesting to see just how successful this film will be at the box office. No doubt it will do pretty well as a digital download, torrent or otherwise.
UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that the hashtag #SocialNetwork has appeared as a Promoted Trending Topic on Twitter. Well that should grab the attention of quite a few social media users! I wonder if Sony Pictures will want to run Facebook ads too? I’m not sure Facebook would allow that. Would you if you were Mark Zuckerberg?
UPDATE 2: It appears order has been restored in the wider world. The international version of ‘The Social Network’ trailer has been released, and it includes Radiohead’s original lyric “so fucking special”, instead of the more sanitized “so very special” in the U.S. version; otherwise, the trailer is the same. If I may say, the “so very special” version never seemed right, not even in Radiohead’s sanitized version. And another thing, Trent Reznor scored the film and says “it’s really fucking good, And dark!”. If he says it’s dark, well, it must be dark.
Hat tip to TechCrunch for the international version update.
