Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake to Co-Star in "The Social Network"

By: Sep. 23, 2009
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Film and stage star Jesse Eisenberg will team up with and pop music star and Emmy Award winner Justin Timberlake in the film "The Social Network" about the formation of Facebook, according to Variety.

The film will be directed by allstar David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and written by the famed Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night and The Farnsworth Invention).  Eisenberg will play founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Timberlake will play Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became Facebook's founding president. The film will also star Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who fell out with Zuckerberg.  Filming is scheduled to begin shortly with an anticipated 2010 release.

Eisenberg co-starred in the Atlantic Theater Company's production of Scarcity; his other film credits include Rodger Doger, The Village, The Squid and the Whale, and the upcoming Kill Your Darlings and Zombieland.  He made his Broadway debut as an understudy in a 1996 revival of Summer and Smoke. He made his screen debut on the 1999 television series Get Real, which was canceled in 2000. After appearing in the made-for-television film Lightning: Fire from the Sky, he starred in the independent film, Roger Dodger (for which he won an award at the San Diego film festival), and in the inspirational film The Emperor's Club, both of which were released in 2002 to generally positive reviews. In 2005, Eisenberg appeared in Cursed, a horror film directed by Wes Craven, and The Squid and the Whale, a well-reviewed independent drama also starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. In addition to Scarcity at the Atlantic Theater Company (2007), Eisenberg also appeare in a workshop production of Lyle Kessler's Orphans in Los Angeles (2006). In 2007, he starred opposite Richard Gere and Terrence Howard in The Hunting Party, a comic thriller in which he plays a young journalist in Bosnia. In 2009, Eisenberg played the lead role in Adventureland, a comedy directed by Greg Mottola and filmed in Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Filming ended in October 2007 and the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. 

Justin Timberlake has won six Grammy Awards as well as two Emmy Awards. He got his big break when he appeared as a contestant on Star Search, and went on to star in the Disney Channel television series The New Mickey Mouse Club. Timberlake became famous in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the boy band 'N Sync. In 2002, he released his debut solo album, Justified, which sold more than 7 million copies worldwide and spawned the hits "Cry Me a River" and "Rock Your Body". Timberlake continued his success with his second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006), debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and produced the US number-one hit singles "SexyBack," "My Love," and "What Goes Around.../...Comes Around."  Aside from music, he has also begun an acting career appearing in films such as Alpha Dog and The Love Guru, while his other ventures include record label Tennman Records, fashion label William Rast, and the restaurants Destino and Southern Hospitality.



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