(The article is a few days old but I thought it was worth posting)

It was bound to happen. Facebook, the subject of a big Hollywood movie — is now coping with becoming a cultural icon and a corporate monolith.

And they don’t like it one bit.

In a well-reported piece in The New York Times this weekend, we learn that Facebook has tried to have it both ways with “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s much-anticipated new thriller from Sony.

They’ve tried to shape the direction of the movie, and when that didn’t really work, they’ve tried to ignore it.

That’s not really working either.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook (played by doppelganger Jesse Eisenberg), is the one most wounded by a film that seems to portray him as someone who created the application “to get girls or to gain power,” according to Chris Hughes, a co-founder who left in 2007, who spoke to the Times.

Zuckerberg told WaxWord as much in a casual conversation in Sun Valley more than a month ago.

“I started Facebook to improve the world, and make it a more transparent place,” he said then. “This movie portrays me as someone who built Facebook so I could meet girls.”

Welcome to the big leagues, Mark.

TheWrap has learned that behind the scenes, Facebook negotiated for months with Sony to get them to rely on an authorized history of the company written by New York Times writer David Kirkpatrick, instead of a more rollicking, sexy account by Ben Mezrich, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

(The Times article never bothers to acknowledge that Kirkpatrick’s book was done with the company’s cooperation, a fact worth including.)

“We would have cooperated with them if they could have made a movie that was the real story,” Zuckerberg said.

The back and forth with filmmaker Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin and producer Scott Rudin did result in changes, but the article doesn’t say what, or how much. Sony did not respond by publication to a request for more detail on what was changed in the film.

Clearly, though, Zuckerberg lost the battle to be the hero of the story. But honestly, if he thought he might win that one, I’m guessing he’s not seen too many Fincher films.

As the Times wrote:

“In Mr. Sorkin’s telling, Mr. Zuckerberg is not so much villain as antihero, a flawed human being whose deep need for acceptance becomes the driving force behind a website that offers the illusion of it.”

How to spin such a PR conundrum? continue reading here

Also read another article about how the idea of the movie originated. Click here