Showtime renews Super Pumped for a second season focusing on Facebook
If that Social Network sequel ever happens, Showtime will have beaten Aaron Sorkin & co. to the punch.
The cable network has renewed its anthology series Super Pumped for a second season, which will focus on Facebook, Showtime announced Tuesday. The season will be based on journalist Mike Isaac's upcoming book about the internet giant, which is described as "a deep dive into Facebook's transition from groundbreaking startup to the power it has become."
The news comes ahead of the premiere of Super Pumped's first season, The Battle for Uber, which explores the tumultuous rise of the rideshare company through the eyes of hard-charging CEO Travis Kalanick (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt). That season was adapted from Isaac's 2019 book about Uber, with Billons co-creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien serving as showrunners alongside their frequent collaborator Beth Schacter. All three are set to return for season 2.
Subtitled Sheryl & Mark, the second season will home in on the relationship between Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company's longtime COO, Sheryl Sandberg. Zuckerberg hired the Lean In author and former Google executive in 2008, believing she "could excel at the parts of the CEO job that he found boring," according to a recent New York Times article. Sandberg became instrumental in helping Zuckerberg shepherd the social media site's massive growth over the past decade: "From the moment they met, both have said, they sensed the potential to transform the company into the global power it is today," the Times article notes.
Facebook's beginnings, of course, were famously dramatized in The Social Network in 2010, with Jesse Eisenberg starring as Zuckerberg. (The film did not feature Sandberg as a character.) Sorkin, who penned the movie's screenplay, has expressed potential interest in making a sequel in light of the many controversies surrounding Facebook in recent years.
"I know enough to know that there should be a sequel," Sorkin said in 2019. "A lot of very interesting, dramatic stuff has happened since [the time when] the movie ends."
It remains to be seen whether that sequel will actually get off the ground. In the meantime, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber will premiere on Showtime Feb. 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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