Founding a successful website is normally a story that would interest only a handful of computer obsessives. It would certainly not be the subject of a million-dollar publishing deal and a Hollywood movie brimming with A-list talent. But then Facebook is no ordinary website.

A book about the beginnings of the globally popular social networking site, which now has more than 200 million users, is set to hit American bookshelves on 14 July. And far from being a story of bespectacled nerds, it promises to be a tale of sex with Victoria’s Secret models, hard-partying champagne bashes and the dark deeds of the rich and powerful.

The cover of the book, The Accidental Billionaires, sets the raunchy tone. It features an overturned cocktail glass and a discarded bra next to the blurb: “A tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal.” The exposé is written by the Boston-based author Ben Mezrich, who has previously, and controversially, chronicled the deeds of Las Vegas gamblers, high-powered financiers and Japanese gangsters.

Purporting to tell the story of Facebook’s founding by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his friends, it charts the site’s rise from a private project aimed at judging the attractiveness of his fellow students to a way for classmates to keep in touch, and eventually to a global phenomenon valued at billions of dollars.

Along the way Mezrich paints a story of backstabbing, wild sex, hard drinking and, at one stage, feasting on roasted koala on a yacht owned by a Silicon Valley millionaire. “No one has really succeeded in making Silicon Valley sexy. But this book might,” said Caroline McCarthy, a journalist for the technology website CNET, who has reviewed a rare advance copy.

Perhaps no wonder, then, that The Accidental Billionaires is the subject of a major movie deal after actor Kevin Spacey signed on to produce it. Spacey even wrote a review of the book on its Amazon page, calling it “a captivating story of betrayal, vast amounts of cash, and two friends who revolutionised the way humans connect to one another – only to have an enormous falling out and never speak again”.

Is this what Social Networking is all about?