CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – On the night he accepted the inaugural Virginia Film Festival Career Producer Honor, Todd Black publicly questioned whether Meta, the company that owns Facebook, was using its influence to suppress enthusiasm for Black and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s new film, “The Social Reckoning.”

Black and Sorkin appeared on stage at the Paramount Theater on Thursday night following a screening of the film. Asked by the moderator what has surprised him about the national audience’s reactions to the film, Black bluntly said, “that more people haven’t seen it.”

He went on to intimate that Meta could be behind the film’s box office struggles, using its algorithm to tamp down chatter about the film, which follows whistle blower Frances Haugen and journalist Jeff Horwitz’s efforts to expose Facebook officials for ignoring internal information that showed the platform was negatively impacting society. 

The film, made on a budget of about $40 million, has grossed just $14.7 million worldwide, to date. That’s been disappointing, especially considering Sorkin’s 2010 film, “The Social Network,” which detailed the rise of Facebook, grossed about $225 million on a similar budget. 

Facebook officials did not respond to a request for comment from Cville Right Now.

Black and Sorkin detailed the legal challenges of making “The Social Reckoning,” telling the Charlottesville crowd that scenes were reviewed by a law firm. Black quipped scenes only got a greenlight if they could survive “summary judgement” in a potential court case.

“Unlike Facebook, unlike Meta, a movie studio can be sued for what it puts on the screen,” Sorkin said, drawing cheers from the audience.

The duo shared an example of a scene where Facebook executives are talking about likely dips in earnings. Sorkin initially wrote the scene to include an executive predicting the exact declines the company did in fact see in the coming quarters. But the lawyers informed Sorkin that depiction could be considered defamatory, so the lines were dropped.

Sorkin also talked about the balance between factual accuracy and artistic license in his projects, including “The Social Reckoning.”

“What journalists do is a photograph,” Sorkin said. “What we do is a painting.”

He gave the example of the opening scene of “The Social Network,” where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is shown drinking vodka and orange juice as he launches a hot-or-not website that was the precursor to Facebook. In actuality, Sorkin said, Zuckerberg was drinking beer – Beck’s – but Sorkin thought the vodka drink better conveyed that Zuckerberg was purposefully getting intoxicated during the scene.

Similarly, in the 2021 film “Being the Ricardos,” another collaboration between Sorkin and Black, Sorkin made the choice to display name placards during a table-reading scene, even though those cards weren’t actually used at the time.

Before Thursday’s screening, Virginia Film Festival Advisory Board member and producer Julie Lynn presented Black, an Academy Award nominated producer, with the festival’s first VFF Career Producer Honor, praising his work ethic, accessibility and willingness to help others in the industry. Among Black’s many credits are “Antwone Fisher,” a movie written by and based on the life of a man Black met because the man worked as a security card at a Hollywood studio.

Black also produced “The Piano Lesson,” “Being the Ricardos,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Fences,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Southpaw,” “The Equalizer,” “The Taking of Pelham 123,” and “The Pursuit of Happiness,” among others.