Empire loves Facebook. We’ve got our own group on the wildly successful social networking website (why not join up when you have a spare couple of minutes?), and individual Empire correspondents can often be found on there, wasting time and doing anything but work.
Empire also loves Aaron Sorkin, the sharp-witted scribe behind the likes of The West Wing, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and A Few Good Men.
So imagine our delight when a project was announced today that will bring both Facebook and Aaron Sorkin together. Yes, it’s Facebook: The Movie.
Well, the finished project won’t be called that, of course, but it’ll do for now as shorthand. Nor will it be a Short Cuts-type movie where a group of disparate people are brought together by their Facebook profiles, status updates, and penchant for vaguely useless applications (honestly, who compares their friends?).
Instead, the movie – which will be produced by heavy-hitter Scott Rudin, for Columbia – will focus on how Facebook was founded by Harvard brainbox Mark Zuckerberg and his two pals, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
In case you don’t already know, it started off as a site for Harvard students only, before expanding to become the planet-eating behemoth we know and love today. And yet Zuckerberg has refused many offers to sell, all of which would have given him enough money to give everyone on Facebook a tenner. Probably.
Sorkin actually broke the news of the project on Facebook, when he opened his account. You can tell it’s him because, unlike the fake Sorkins running around out there (and Empire has to ask: who is sad enough to start a fake Facebook page for Aaron Sorkin?), there’s no option to add him as a friend. Not that we’ve tried. Ahem.
So, what do you think, readers? Good idea, especially given Sorkin’s penchant for fine writing and brilliant dialogue? Are you pining now for MySpace: The Movie (which would be like being shouted at for 90 minutes, presumably)? Or should Sorkin’s next status update read, ‘Aaron was only kidding about the Facebook thing – it’s a very bad idea’?