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BlackBerry
Two mismatched entrepreneurs – egghead innovator Mike Lazaridis and cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie – joined forces in an endeavour that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.
2023 · Directed by Matt Johnson · 120 min · Comedy · Drama · History · Screenplay in the scene database · 16 frames
Tagline
Work hard. Fail hard.
Plot
In Waterloo, Ontario in 1996, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis and his best friend and co-founder Douglas Fregin prepare to pitch their "PocketLink" cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie. Their pitch is unsuccessful, but after Balsillie is fired from his job due to his aggressive ambition, he offers to invest $20,000 for 50% of the company and a position as CEO. Lazaridis, prompted by Fregin, initially declines Balsillie's offer, but after confirming Balsillie's suspicion that their $16 million deal with USRobotics was in bad faith, they bring Balsillie in as a co-CEO with Lazaridis and sell him a 33% stake in RIM for $125,000. After joining RIM, Balsillie discovers that the company is in a dire financial position and he mortgages his house to add a cash infusion to make payroll.
Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight, which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the last second and finishes the pitch, and they rebrand the PocketLink as the "BlackBerry", which becomes massively successful.
In 2003, Palm Inc. CEO Carl Yankowski plans a hostile takeover of the immensely successful RIM, leading Balsillie to try to raise RIM's stockprice by selling more phones than Bell Atlantic's (now Verizon Communications) network can support. This does crash the network, as Lazaridis had warned, so Balsillie poaches engineers from around the world to fix the problem, as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy as RIM's chief operating officer to keep the engineers in line. Purdy's employment upsets Fregin, who values the casual and fun work environment he and Lazaridis had created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy's strict management, and RIM avoids Yankowski's buyout.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller
- Cinematography: Jared Raab
- Edited by: Curt Lobb
- Music: Jay McCarrol
- Production design: Adam Belanger
- Produced by: Niv Fichman, Kevin Krikst, Fraser Ash, Matthew Miller
Cast
- Jay Baruchel as Mike
- Glenn Howerton as Jim
- Matt Johnson as Doug
- Saul Rubinek as John Woodman
- Cary Elwes as Carl Yankowski
- Rich Sommer as Paul Stanos
- Michael Ironside as Charles Purdy
- Martin Donovan as Rick Brock
- Michelle Giroux as Dara Frankel
- SungWon Cho as Ritchie
Production
- Country: Canada, United States of America, Finland
- Language: English
- Studios: Zapruder Films, Rhombus Media, XYZ Films, IPR.VC
- Budget: $5,000,000
- Box office: $2,600,000
- Themes: based on novel or book, technology, it-expert, silicon valley, satire, biography, based on true story, workplace, rise and fall, cell phone
More by Matt Johnson
On this film
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