Timberlake signs on to co-star in Facebook movie, “The Social Network”

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Justin Timberlake. Credit: Chris Pizzello / AP

Did Facebook just get somewhat cooler?

Variety is reporting that the latest addition to ‘The Social Network,’ the early-stage Hollywood movie project that will tell Facebook’s origin story, has signed Justin Timberlake to play a principal character.

The actor-singer-Emmy winner is slated to play Sean Parker, a co-founder of Napster (not to be confused with Sean Fanning, the music site’s creator) and Facebook’s first president. Timberlake will play alongside Jesse Eisenberg (‘Adventureland’, ‘The Squid and the Whale’), who will portray Facebook’s founding father Mark Zuckerberg, who was 19 when he famously created ‘The Facebook’ in his Harvard dorm room.

The film will apparently concentrate on the vicissitudes of fame and fortune encountered by the young founders, whose meteoric ascent into wealth and pop culture was not always without its hitches.

The script was written by Aaron Sorkin, a specialist in spinning drama out of often prosaic reality. Facebook’s origin story comes with its share of Hollywood’s classic elements involved -- money, power, and even betrayal -- but Sorkin and director David Fincher may have to take some liberties with the sex.

-- David Sarno