Aaron Sorkin says Social Reckoning reshoots weren't due to trailer reaction

Aaron Sorkin has insisted the reshoots on The Social Reckoning were not because of the mixed reaction to the film's trailer.

In the follow-up to 2010's The Social Network, Mikey Madison stars as a former Facebook engineer-turned-whistleblower who teams up with Jeremy Allen White's reporter to expose the inner workings of the social media site.

The film underwent three days of reshoots after the first trailer was released, and writer-director Sorkin has insisted they had nothing to do with the mixed response to the teaser.

"We weren't correcting anything," he told Vanity Fair. "There are two kinds of reshoots: one is the 'Oh, we're in trouble. We need to reshoot this.' And that usually happens on $150 million superhero movies. The other kinds of reshoots are 'Oh, we really like this movie. It's good. Let's make it better.'"

Sorkin explained that Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tom Rothman asked if there were any scenes he wanted to reshoot, given the chance, and he felt there were two scenes that could be improved on.

"And so he opened the chequebook and gave us three days of shooting," he added.

Elsewhere in the interview, the Oscar-winning writer confirmed it was his decision not to mention U.S. President Donald Trump by name in the film, despite the story featuring a recreation of the U.S. Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.

"I want to be clear: I was never asked to do that, to not mention Trump by name," he stated. "I turned in the script and a day or two later met with Tom Rothman, who was full speed ahead on it. And I promised him, unprovoked, that we would not see any Trump signage, no 'Make America Great Again.' The movie is about Facebook's role and the rise of divisiveness, extremism, and hyper-partisanship in the country. It is not a red-blue thing, even though, obviously, it will be felt that way."

The Social Reckoning, also starring Jeremy Strong as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, will be released on 9 October.