Facebook Pushed for Big Changes to Movie

Executives are ignoring it publicly, fighting it privately
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 21, 2010 1:50 PM CDT

Mark Zuckerberg and crew are taking a ho-hum attitude in public about the upcoming Facebook movie the Social Network, save for a few comments here and there about how it distorts reality. Things are much more tense in private, reports the New York Times, which describes behind-the-scenes contacts between Facebook executives and the movie's makers. One of the producers, Scott Rudin, says two top Facebook execs screened the movie, "and they did not like it."

Rudin also says he let colleagues of Zuckerberg's read the script in advance and even made small changes at their behest, but producers rejected more substantive ones. The movie has big aspirations—it wants to be a generation-defining film along the lines of the Big Chill, notes the Times—so it's not clear how well Facebook's public strategy of the cold shoulder will fare. "They are going to try to ignore it but are going to be unable to,” says one author who's written about the company. (See the movie's trailer in the gallery.)

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