Update, 3/21/18, 4:30 p.m.: Zuckerberg made his public statement on Wednesday afternoon.

The boy king will finally address his subjects.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been conspicuously silent about the controversy surrounding Cambridge Analytica, and its reported misuse of Facebook data to help influence the 2016 U.S. election, is planning a public statement about the scandal for Wednesday or early Thursday.

The news was first reported by Axios' Mike Allen, and Facebook confirmed Zuckerberg's plans about speaking within the "next 24 hours" to Mashable. So far neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg have spoken out about the scandal, which involved Cambridge Analytica using Facebook tools to harvest the data of approximately 50 million users, mostly without their knowledge or informed consent. While Facebook tightened the way developers gather data years ago, the revelations have led to calls for the public to re-examine its relationship with the social network, which now has over 2 billion users.

Zuckerberg's silence has led to growing questions about just where the hell he is? Publications from Recode to The Atlantic to Quartz have all called for him to make a public statement, and he — and Sandberg — were reportedly absent from an internal "emergency" meeting at Facebook held on Tuesday morning that addressed questions from employees.

While Zuckerburg hasn't said a word since the story began to unfold late Friday, other Facebook executives, including VP Andrew Bosworth and Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos — who is reportedly on his way out from the company — have addressed the controversy on both Facebook and Twitter. Some of those comments have since been deleted.

Zuckerberg's statement will be aimed at "rebuilding trust." The reason for his delayed response as "that he wanted to say something meaningful rather than just rushing out," and that he was initially focused on "fixing" the problem instead of speaking out about it.

Updated 3/21/18, 9:55 a.m. with Facebook's confirmation of Zuckerberg's planned statement.