Citing a quote from Sorkin himself, The Playlist reports the cast includes Armie Hammer from Gossip Girl; model Dakota Johnson (who is Griffith's daughter); Max Minghella of Agora; and male model Josh Pence. This goes beyond lead actors Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield, who were already confirmed.

A quick look at the cast members, with some thoughts on who some of the new people might be portraying (all pics by Getty Images unless otherwise credited):

UPDATE: We've updated the entires for Hammer, Song and Pence. UPDATE: And Mara.

esse Eisenberg plays founder Mark Zuckerberg. He's got the curly hair and geeky look down well enough.

Justin Timberlake plays early Facebook adviser and Napster co-founder Sean Parker. (Insert Parker photo by Andrew Mager on Flickr.)

Andrew Garfield plays spurned co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Brenda Song, of the Disney Channel, would appear to be a shoo-in to play Zuckerberg's girlfriend Priscilla Chan. UPDATE: One tipster tells us Chan does not appear in the script but that Saverin is supposed to have an Asian girlfriend, so perhaps Song is taking on that role.

Whomever model Josh Pence is playing, he's definitely not part of the Silicon Valley tech scene. How about the Winklevoss twins, two Olympic rowers from Harvard who accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for Facebook? UPDATE: That part is being played by Armie Hammer (see here). Perhaps Pence could be another Harvard kid?That would seem to work. Pic via Nous Model Management.

Dakota Johnson looks like the kind of girl you'd hope to meet during a night on the town in San Francisco. And Zuckerberg did escort that Victoria's Secret model away from a party there — at least according to author Ben Mezrich.

<pRooney Mara (The Winning Season) looks so downright nice. Zuckerberg's geek girl friend at Harvard, maybe? UPDATE: A tipster suggested Zuckerberg's sister Randi. Good call.Send us your guess.

Max Minghella — no idea who he might play. Thoughts?

Armie Hammer from Gossip Girl. UPDATE: He is playing the Winklevoss twins, Olympic rowers who sued Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook, according to a tweet from director Richard Kelly. Pic via

There's no question Mezrich's 14-page book proposal was eyebrow-arching; it featured scenes in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ate koala on board the yacht of a Sun Microsystems exec and in which he's targeted by the FBI after hacking into a government website. But the claims have been challenged as factually incorrect, and Mezrich, who has admitted to fabrications in a prior book, has woven more questionable scenes into his final book.

Mezrich may not have much of a handle on the facts, but judging by Sorkin's reaction to his work, and a positive review of Sorkin's first screenplay draft, Mezrich knows how to set up an eminently watchable film. And given Facebook's nerdy history, it was probably inevitable the truth would have to be twisted to accomplish that goal.

[via Vanity Fair]

In summarizing coveted advance copies of the book, other writers have been relatively kind to Accidental Billionaires. Mezrich speculates wildly in the book, after failing to get access to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and early accounts emphasized how much fun this could be: Sex in bathroom stalls, liaisons with Victora's Secret models, drug-filled parties, etc.

To Maslin, the speculative writing is just bad; cheesy and poorly done. Some of the excerpts she mocks:

• It's cold, so: "A stiff, crisp breeze whipped through the thin material of Eduardo's shirt..."
  
• During a Eureka moment for Zuckerberg: "If Balzac had somehow risen from the dead..."
  
• "'We almost hear the James Bond theme running through the kid's head.'"
  
• Zuckerberg is imagined in a "James-Bond like lair."
• After stealing data from a room where two lovers were getting it on, we "imagine him noticing, as he goes, that the girl's floral perfume still hangs, seductively, in the air."
  
• Elevator music: "Speeding up the spine of a massive, San Francisco skyscraper... [he hears] the sickly, soft chords of a brutally mangled Beatles song, pumped through speakers embedded above the fluorescent lights that lit the carpeted, cubic lift."
  
• "Maybe he'd never really known Mark Zuckerberg. He wondered if, deep down, Mark Zuckerberg ever knew himself."

This critical smackdown in the Times is destined to haunt Mezrich forever, mainly by making him chuckle every time he deposits one of the massive residual checks from the movie, after it becomes a worldwide blockbuster that has been completely rewritten.

As the co-founder of Napster, Parker (pictured) was overshadowed by Sean Fanning, who actually wrote the wildly-popular music-sharing software. Sorkin reportedly brings Parker to the fore, giving him credit for lighting a fire under Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and accelerating the company's growth.

ScriptShadow's Carson Reeves:

And don't get me started on Sean Parker - a character that can become

iconic if the film is made. The brash techy rock star revels in his own

ego, and is a key player in why Facebook is on our computers today

(Parker ended up selling his portion of the company for - I believe - a

couple hundred million dollars).

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, looks comparatively pathetic. In what Reeves calls a "heartbreaking scene," he sits alone ("not one true friend") in a dark room and "friends" the girl who dumped him right before he started Facebook. The movie nevertheless bops along as something of a comedy, thanks to Sorkin's "crazy unknown voodoo screenwriting tricks" and, apparently, jokes involving Facebook use.

Zuckerberg, whose flacks have been trashing the unreleased book on which Sorkin's script is based, may yet discover there are worse things than being depicted having sex in bathroom stalls.

(Pic: Sean Parker, by Andrew Mager)

Far be it from money-and-technology-obsessed Silicon Valley types to fixate on the fleshy trappings of wealth; they want to know the nitty-gritty details of how a market-leading social network was born. And indeed, both Boston magazine and the New York Times, which obtained galleys of the book, note that Accidental Billionaires doesn't tell the reader much about how the site was actually assembled; instead, lustier details — well, purported details — win out.

Luke O'Brien recapped one scene for Boston:

Zuckerberg himself remains distant, a robot in a fleece. How strange, then, to see this cipher getting freaky with a coed in a bathroom. Rendering Zuckerberg and [co-founder Eduardo] Saverin as campus studs, Mezrich shows them turning out groupies in adjacent stalls.

Zuckerberg is also shown being picked up by a Victoria Secret model at a party in San Francisco (a change from the book proposal we obtained last year, which had co-founder Eduardo Saverin with the model). The pair leave together. As both the Boston and the Times note, the scene is hard to swallow; Facebook had launched just months prior. Dweeby Zuckerberg already had groupies? O'Brien, who has himself dug into Facebook's past, wrote that Zuckerberg has "been dating the same girl since the site's early days" and that there's no evidence Facebook was created so Zuckerberg could score with women.

Even Mezrich doesn't sound too confident in the hook-up scenes. From Boston:

"I just told the story that I was told by multiple sources," Mezrich explains now. "More power to Mark if that's what really happened. ...I have a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg right now could date anybody he wants to. ...Mark has done some amazing things, and if having sex with a Victoria's Secret model is one of the things that he doesn't like to read about himself, I would be surprised."

In other words, Zuckerberg should accept the tales because they're flattering. That was the stance the subjects of Mazerich's Burning Down the House seemed to take when it emerged much of that book — also turned into a movie — was fabricated. But, unlike those obscure college card sharks, Zuckerberg's ambitions extend far beyond silver screen notoriety, and the Facebook CEO is more likely to make a fuss. Indeed, his flacks have already declared that Mezrich's unreleased book sounds inaccurate. Somehow we doubt they'll leave it at that.

[Boston, Times]

Columbia wants to start production by the end of the year, according to Variety, even though the book on which the film is based won't be released until July 14. So even assuming screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is working on advance manuscripts, he and his colleagues will need to move quickly.

The book is being done by admitted fabricator Ben Mezrich, so they should probably start with the fact-checking.

We hear the New York Times' Brad Stone has been calling around frantically, trying to get hold of a galley himself and spoil Fortune's exclusive. And he may well succeed; the writer outed the author of the anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog last year with help from his sources in the publishing industry. Mezrich's book is due out July 14.

The media scramble for galleys of Accidental Billionaires just goes to show Facebook remains something of an "it" company in Silicon Valley, even as it grows out of its startup phase and gropes for revenue.

It also proves that respected media outlets have no trouble taking seriously a project created by a busted, fabricating author and adapted for film by would-be crack smuggler, about a money-losing company.

Nor do we, obviously. We'd love to get our hands on said galleys, if only to fact-check them the way we did with Mezrich's comical book proposal. If you can help, please get in touch.

The evidence that the two have ended their feud, which began when they were both students at Harvard and Facebook was just getting off the ground: Saverin is now listed as a company founder on Facebook's website.

There's an excellent reason for Zuckerberg to make nice with Saverin, though: Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House, is writing an account of the founding of Facebook which relies heavily on Saverin as a source. Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing creator, is already planning to adapt the book, which doesn't have a publication date yet, into a movie.

If Saverin has made up with Zuckerberg, he may not be as willing to cooperate with Mezrich. One hopes the author got his interviews done before Saverin's name went back up on Facebook. A book proposal leaked to Gawker last year has some factual errors — Zuckerberg and Saverin dined on the yacht of then-Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who says he has never owned a boat. But even if it gets close to the truth of Facebook's origins, it will be embarrassing, since it claims that Zuckerberg and Saverin set up the website to meet girls. The feud between the founders was central to the plot.

It has been almost five years since Zuckerberg has acknowledged Saverin as having anything to do with the company, which Saverin incorporated and managed for Zuckerberg from their college dorm. According to Rolling Stone, Zuckerberg reincorporated the company and squeezed Saverin out after he accused Zuckerberg of spending company money on personal expenses:

In July, Zuckerberg and Saverin had a mysterious falling out. Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit, claiming Saverin jeopardized the company by freezing Facebook's bank accounts. Saverin countersued, claiming that Zuckerberg never matched his $20,000 in seed money and, further, used that money for personal expenses. That summer, Zuckerberg transferred all intellectual-property rights and membership interests to a new version of the company in Delaware.

Saverin reportedly told Cameron Winklevoss, another student embroiled in a legal dispute with Zuckerberg, that Zuckerberg had "screwed him, too." Zuckerberg moved the company to Palo Alto, Calif., and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, making the company worth a notional $15 billion on paper. Saverin saw none of that.

With hard feelings seemingly over (possibly smoothed over by some cash or stock), Facebook flack Brandee Barker explains Saverin's official co-founder status this way:

We made the change recently to make sure Eduardo gets the credit and visibility he deserves for his contribution to Facebook.

That's quite a change from Facebook's official stance in 2007, when Barker herself denied on the record that Saverin cofounded Facebook, even though he was listed in the company's documents of incorporation.

Since the lawsuit centers around who did what for Facebook when, it seems absurd to think that Zuckerberg would publicly acknowledge Saverin with a lawsuit hanging over his head. Barker repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the status of the lawsuit. Saverin and his lawyers did not return inquiries. Now, with an ending that seems to have zipped Saverin's lips, will Sorkin and Mezrich have any story to tell?

Rather, Sorkin's publicist, Joy Fehily, tells us, on his behalf. Or whoever answers her email. With all the layers of secretaries and managers and representatives in Hollywood, you can never tell. Yesterday, Sorkin's agent's assistant issued a nondenial, before politely informing us, "I have to hang up on you now."

Likewise, the skeptics will have to hang up on any remaining doubts that Sorkin is behind this movie. Really, could anyone else do the movie? Sorkin is the master of the office drama, picking up on the details that make an inside-baseball story at once believable to insiders and entertaining to outsiders. If it had been anyone but Sorkin, we would have scoffed, too.

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I've just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented. I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)

One reason why we're optimistic this Sorkin is the real one: As a writer he's always shown a taste for procedural stories — using the detailed inner workings of politics, law and show business to craft his plots. Plus, from A Few Good Men, we know he's good at the courtroom scenes, which will come in handy once his researcher turns up the many disputes over Facebook's founding.