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West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin to pen Facebook film

28/08/2008

Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, is to write a movie based on the rise of Facebook, he has confirmed.

The screenwriter is in negotiations to create an as-yet-untitled film about the social networking site, according to Variety, after announcing the project on his own Facebook page.

"I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name - which I find more flattering than creepy - but this is me," he wrote.

"I don't know how I can prove that but feel free to test me.

"I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)"

Scott Rudin is to produce the Columbia Pictures project, Variety reports, which had been intended as a secret project until Sorkin's Facebook announcement.

The film is to focus on the growth of the social networking site from a portal for Harvard students to enticing more than 100 million people to add their own accounts.

Creator Mark Zuckerberg has resolutely turned down offers to sell the company, though the site's valuation was reportedly defined as around $16 billion last year after Microsoft outbid Google by paying $240 million for a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook.

Sorkin, whose feature films include A Few Good Men and Charlie Wilson's War, also announced on his own Facebook page that his next project, The Trial of the Chicago 7, was in pre-production.

"I feel about this introduction the way I felt about 'Sophie's Choice': It could have been funnier," the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip writer joked.