WHOOPS

Oscar Winner Admits He’s Bad at Directing After Movie Flop

“I have no visual sensibility, it turns out,” the acclaimed screenwriter confessed.

Filmmaker Aaron Sorkin has serious doubts about his own directing ability.

Screenwriter Sorkin, 65, won a Best Screenplay Academy Award in 2011 for The Social Network, a film that exposed Facebook’s shady beginnings and for which director David Fincher also earned an Oscar nomination. Sorkin then wrote and directed the 2026 follow-up, The Social Reckoning (Fincher couldn’t direct it because he has an exclusive deal at Netflix, and Sony owned the film).

“I was my second choice to direct it,” Sorkin said on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. He added, “I would have rather David Fincher directed it—I would rather David Fincher direct everything.”

The Social Reckoning follows the Facebook whistleblower (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen-White) as they expose Meta’s corruption and Mark Zuckerberg’s (Jeremy Strong) complicity. Unlike its predecessor, The Social Reckoning bombed at the box office, earning just $5.5 million in its Oct. 9 opening weekend and grossing only $15 million worldwide. Conversely, The Social Network earned $22.1 million in its debut and closed out its run with $225 million globally.

Sorkin blames the film’s financial and critical failure, in part, on his direction. The screenwriter’s prolific scripts include critically acclaimed works like A Few Good Men, Moneyball, and The West Wing, but Hollywood hasn’t praised his directing career as much. In addition to The Social Reckoning, Sorkin helmed Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Being the Ricardos. Critics generally liked the scripts and the acting, but felt lukewarm about Sorkin’s direction.

“There’s a big part of me that feels like I just got into the movie business a few minutes ago, and that there’s so much I don’t know,” Sorkin said. “From time to time, I get to speak with screenwriting students, and I’ll be asked, ‘Is screenwriting something that can be taught?’ And the answer is, ‘There are parts of screenwriting — important parts—that can be taught and can be learned, but there are parts that can’t be. And those parts that can’t be? That’s usually what we mean when we use the word ‘talent.’ I’m very worried that the parts of directing that I’m not good at are those parts that you can’t learn.”

Bigtime directors like Rob Reiner, Danny Boyle, and Mike Nichols have turned Sorkin’s scripts into acclaimed movies, but Sorkin fears he couldn’t grasp their skills despite trying his hardest.

“I was surprised by how little of the science of filmmaking I’d managed to absorb,” he said. “I have no visual sensibility, it turns out.”

Sorkin said he feels like a football coach after a big loss, where strong components can’t seem to combine into a winning game.

“That’s how I feel about directing,” Sorkin said. “There are things that I’ve been doing right along the way. Just give me one more chance, and one of these days I’ll be able to put it all together.”

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

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