Is Mark Zuckerberg bigger as a philanthropist or at the box office?

Is Mark Zuckerberg bigger as a philanthropist or at the box office?

Is Mark Zuckerberg bigger as a philanthropist or at the box office?

Where Slate readers predict the future.
Oct. 31 2010 10:09 PM

The Facebook Movie Poll

Is Mark Zuckerberg bigger as a philanthropist or at the box office?

On Oct. 1, The Social Network, which has been described as portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as "an insecure jerk who screws over people and becomes a much richer insecure jerk," opens at a theater near you. On Sept. 24—exactly one week before the movie opens—Zuckerberg officially announced  a $100 million donation to the public schools of Newark, N.J. The two events are unrelated (honest!) but they naturally raise a question: Which will be higher, the amount of Zuckerberg's donation, or the movie's four-week gross?

It's a pretty simple question—although this site, which predicts a four-week gross of about $86 milllion, is sort of complicated. At any rate, this poll will close the day the movie opens.

Update, Oct. 31: After four weeks in release, The Social Network has grossed just over $75 million. No, wait a minute, it grossed $107 million. Which is it? The first figure is its take at the domestic box office, which is the number tracked by the link in the original queston. The second is its worldwide gross. The number we were looking for was domestic gross, but since we didn't say that explicitly, it's hard to say which answer is correct. So we'll take the easy way out: Everyone's right! To the question of whether Mark Zuckerberg is bigger as a philanthropist than as a box office phenomenon, tha answer is: It depends.