LARRY PAGE AND SERGEY BRIN seem set to follow Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the silver screen.

The so-called ‘Facebook film’, The Social Network, hits cinemas on October 15 – and is understood to have already ruffled the feathers of Zuckerberg would would rather a film wasn’t made about him while he was still alive.

Now, however, it appears that the founders of Google – who famously didn’t get along when they first met – may also be subjected to the cinematic treatment, with the rights to a Ken Auletta book about their meeting and the early days of the business being acquired by a production company.

‘Googled: The End of the World As We Know It‘, published late last year, professes to chronicle the birth of the business at Stamford University, when the two students wrote a PhD paper on improving search engine technologies by ranking pages based on the number of ‘backward links’ they had.
Deadline.com reports now that the rights to the book by Auletta – the media columnist for The New Yorker magazine – have been bought by Groundswell Productions with the intention of having John Morris, a regular investor in the high-tech industry, produce.

“It’s about these two young guys who created a company that changed the world, and how the world in turn changed them,” said Groundswell’s Michael London. “The heart of the movie is their wonderful edict, don’t be evil.

“At a certain point in the evolution of a company so big and powerful, there are a million challenges to that mandate. Can you stay true to principles like that as you become as rich and powerful as that company has become?

“The intention is to be sympathetic to Sergey and Larry, and hopefully the film will be as interesting as the company they created.”

The first reviews of the Facebook movie, meanwhile, written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing, are glowing.