EXCLUSIVE: Vincent Young has wrapped on the Los Angeles shoot for his directorial debut, Small Talk, a period music drama starring Keegan Allen (Pretty Little Liars), Conor Husting (The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia), Rio Mangini (Wolf Pack), Sophia Del Rio (72 Hours) and Austin North (Outer Banks).

Set against the late ’70s Los Angeles rock scene, Small Talk follows a young band on the edge of success as ambition, romance, and addiction threaten to destroy the music that brought them together. The film traces the relationships surrounding the band as their sudden rise begins testing the friendships and loyalties that helped create it.

Young directed from a script written with RJ Zabasky, based on a story he conceived with Douglas Young, also producing alongside Kristifor Cvijetic and Zabasky. Douglas Young exec produced, with Brian Yuran, Evan Sorlien and Chris Kim serving as co-producers.

The supporting cast includes Sophie Swiszcz, Shaun Holmes, Ruben Vernier, Doug Locke, Jamison Jones, Ross Gallo, Kavan Reece, Maury Morgan, Liam Martinez and Michael Paré. Dean Fronk and Donald Pemrick handled casting.

Young told Deadline, “At its core, Small Talk is really about what we leave behind in other people. The title came from this idea that so much of life can become noise, such as the things we say, the things we chase, and the way we present ourselves. However, none of that carries the same weight as what we actually do for someone we love. I was drawn to exploring characters who are still figuring that out, and I wanted to tell that story inside a world that felt completely alive and specific, as though we had stepped into Los Angeles in the late ’70s rather than recreated it from a distance.”

Allen is repped by IAG, Creative Talent Group, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman; Husting by Brave Artists Management and CESD; Mangini by LBI and Pallas Management Group; Del Rio by Luber Roklin Entertainment; and North by Buchwald, Luber Roklin and Myman Greenspan.

A Monster Calls writer Patrick Ness has been tapped by Disney Live Action to turn The Dallergut Dream Department Store novels into a live-action movie set in a magical world.

Ness earlier created the 20th Century Studios prequel for 2003’s war-adventure epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which starred Russell Crowe. For Disney Live Action, Ness will bring Korean author Miye Lee’s bestselling novels to the big screen as the first in a planned trilogy set in a magical world.

“Penny just landed her dream job: selling dreams to customers at the legendary Dallergut Dream Department Store. But when strange, dangerous things begin to happen to the sleeping clientele, Penny must uncover the mystery before the nightmare spreads beyond the store,” a synopsis from the producers states.

The Dallergut Dream Department Store books lead the charts in Korea, and have sold around 2 million copies in over 20 territories worldwide. Ness is the author of books for adults, young adults and children, including A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy. 

He also created and wrote the eight-part BBC Doctor Who spinoff Class and has adapted two of his works for films. Ness’s novels include The Crash of Hennington, The Crane Wife, More Than This, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Release, And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Burn, Different for Boys, his middle grade series Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, and Piper at the Gates of Dusk, the first of The New World trilogy.

Jessica Virtue, executive vp of production, will oversee the book adaptation project for Disney Live Action.

Aaron Sorkin says Facebook has gotten “way out of hand” and evolved into a social media monster that doesn’t reflect what co-founder Mark Zuckerberg originally intended.

The writer and director of the upcoming film The Social Reckoning — the sequel to the 2010 hit The Social Network — tells Esquire in a new interview that the social media platform has become dangerous given how many of its billions of global users get their news from the platform.

“I don’t want to get the stat wrong, but it’s about a third of American adults get their news from Facebook,” Sorkin said (Pew’s latest research puts the number even higher, at 38 percent). “That is very dangerous. We’re no longer agreeing that the sky is blue and two plus two equals four.”

Continued Sorkin: “And by the way, let me be clear: I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg ever intended for it to have a corrosive effect. I think his intentions were good. He was somebody who, like a lot of people, had difficulty fitting into the social structure of college life and probably high school. He invented his own social structure, and he got to be the mayor of it and couldn’t be excluded from it. His brilliance is undeniable, and that was a cool thing and it got way out of hand. It’s gone completely out of control.”

Sorkin has previously declared “I blame Facebook for January 6,” and was asked about that connection in the new interview and whether it’s part of the film.

“What definitely is part of the movie is what Facebook did in 2018. They were in trouble. Engagement was going down, there was competition from TikTok, and they had to do something. So they retuned the algorithm … they knew that the things that get reshared the most are rage bait. So they began pumping into the air supply all this stuff intended to make you mad. Certainly, you can draw a line from that to January 6.”

Based on true events, the new film centers on a young Facebook engineer named Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) who teams up with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) on a risky mission to bring attention to the social network’s biggest secrets. Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg, who played the role in the first film.

The 65-year-old screenwriter was also asked about his stroke, from which he thankfully says he’s managed “to recover 100 percent.”

“I had been not living a very healthy life,” he said. “I wasn’t exercising enough. I was still eating the way I ate in college. I was smoking a lot. So I decided not to do that anymore. And it wasn’t even because I felt bad. It was because I saw the look in my daughter’s face. I scared the hell out of her, and I didn’t want to do that anymore.”

Sony Pictures is set to release The Social Reckoning in theaters Oct. 9.