BlackBerry will depict the growth and fall of the first smartphone on the big screen. Globe & Mail writers Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff adapted their nonfiction best-seller Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind BlackBerry’s Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall into the forthcoming film BlackBerry, which will star Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton.
Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche, Nirvanna the Band the Show) not only directs but also co-stars in Blackberry. The film follows other prominent works like The Dropout and WeCrashed that tell the lives of the most arrogant people in the technology sector.
The plot of the next film will draw from an underappreciated yet interesting period in technology’s past. Research in Motion Inc. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, pioneered the smartphone industry with its BlackBerry model. The film will likely focus heavily on the lives of co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, two of the most admired business leaders in Canada, and on how the Waterloo area became the country’s version of Silicon Valley. The BlackBerry brand of smartphones, easily recognisable by its signature black buttons, had widespread popularity in the early years of the 21st century, particularly among businesspeople and government officials.
With a multi-year head start, BlackBerry was able to compete with the iPhone for a while, but eventually, Apple’s device and others outperformed it, and the firm became mired in several legal challenges, which ultimately led to its demise in 2007. BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, develops cybersecurity software instead of hardware, notably the company’s namesake smartphone. Earlier this year, the corporation decided to no longer support BlackBerry devices. The extent to which BlackBerry sheds light on this matter remains to be seen. Johnson, Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Baruchel (Goon), Martin Donovan (Tenet), Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), Michael Ironside (Total Recall), Saul Rubinek (Unforgiven), and Rich Sommer (Mad Men) are among the film’s other stars.
This production team consists of Niv Fichman, Matthew Miller, Fraser Ash, and Kevin Krikst. Production companies involved include Rhombus Media, Zapruder Films, CBC Films, and IPR.VC, and XYZ Films, with help from Telefilm Canada and Ontario Creates. This September, during the Toronto International Film Festival, BlackBerry will be unveiled to the public for the first time.