Telling the tale of the sudden rise of the modern day phenomenon Facebook and the subsequent fallout between its originators, the 2010 drama “The Social Network” gained wide spread acclaim from the most respected film critics and received eight Academy awards nominations, winning in three categories.
Outraged by his girlfriend dumping him, 19 years old Harvard student creates a website which he calls Facemash, on which you could rate the hotness of various female students from Harvard. After Harvard network crashes due to increased traffic to Facemash, Zuckerberg receives six months of probation, but also draws the attention of wealthy fellow Harvard students the Winklevoss twins and their business partner Divya Narendra. Together they start working on a dating site called Harvard Connection. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg wants to start his own Harvard-exclusive social network called Thefacebook, and with the financial help of his friend Eduardo Saverin he achieves his goal. When Thefacebook begins gaining on popularity, the Winklevoss twins find out about it and accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. They don’t pursue legal means, but as the Thefacebook phenomenon keeps spreading to other colleges they sue the company for theft of intellectual property. Ultimately, company drops “the” from its title and Facebook becomes a global empire. After Zuckerberg attempts to push Saverin out of the company, he gets sued by him as well. Both the Winklevoss and the Saverin lawsuits get settled out of court, and despite it all Zuckerberg becomes the world’s youngest billionaire, even though still lonely and insecure.