David Fincher's "The Social Network," known casually as "The Facebook Movie," is going to be nominated for Oscars.
The only question is, which ones?
I haven't seen the movie yet -- nobody outside its production has -- but I have read Aaron Sorkin's 162-page script, which tells a fascinating story with the necessary ingredients to translate into one of the year's best films.
With ten Best Picture nominees again this year and no clear-cut front-runners in sight, it's likely that the Columbia film will find itself in the Oscar conversation during the increasingly long awards season.
Based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal," the story charts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's transformation from a happy, 19-year-old Harvard sophomore to a miserable 24-year-old internet billionaire who created an international phenomenon that became an unwieldy monster.
By all accounts, Zuckerberg's success went to his head and he became a bit of a brilliant jerk.
Jesse Eisenberg stars as Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield ("Lions For Lambs") plays Facebook co-founder and original financier Eduardo Saverin, while Justin Timberlake co-stars as Napster founder Sean Parker, the dot-com rock star who Zuckerberg became infatuated with after Facebook was established. In an interview with MTV, Eisenberg described the trio's relationship in the film as a platonic love triangle.
As far as the project's Oscar pedigree is concerned, Fincher earned his first Best Director nomination two years ago for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Hollywood didn't always consider his films as awards bait, but "Benjamin Button" proved that Fincher is more than just a genre master ("Seven," "Zodiac"); he's an elite filmmaker whose work deserves to be included on any short-list of awards contenders, even if "The Social Network" represents a major deviation from the themes of his earlier movies.
The picture's Oscar chances are bolstered by the presence of power producer Scott Rudin, who won a Best Picture statue in 2008 for "No Country for Old Men," and was previously nominated for the Academy's highest honor in 2003 for "The Hours." Rudin also exec produced Best Picture nominees "The Queen" and "There Will Be Blood," and will be competing against himself again this year, as he's also a producer on the Coen Brothers' "True Grit" and an exec producer on Peter Weir's "The Way Back."
On the other hand, for all his A-list status, Sorkin has actually never been nominated for an Oscar, despite landing three Golden Globe nominations for his work on "A Few Good Men," "The American President" and "Charlie Wilson's War," which is interesting considering the Golden Globes only nominate five scripts a year, while the Oscars honor ten screenplays -- five original and five adapted.
And interestingly enough, Sorkin has described himself as computer ignorant, and reportedly had little to no knowledge of Facebook when he got the gig.
But "The Social Network's" best chance at an Oscar nomination comes from an unlikely source -- Timberlake.
