Production has wrapped on Blackberry, a new film that examines the rise and fall of the iPhone precursor and Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind it.
Based on the 2015 book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, the film will star Jay Baruchel (This Is The End) and Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). They are expected to star as co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
While production is complete, the film does not yet have a distributor. Financers will look for buyers at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
Blackberry became wildly popular in the 2000s, earning the infamous nickname “Crackberry.” The device’s ability to combine phone services with email and text messaging was, at the time, revolutionary and paved the way for the iPhone, Android and other smartphones. It was a technological giant that emerged from a largely unknown province in Ontario.
Business leaders and celebrities were equally infatuated. And in 2009, Fortune named it the world’s fastest growing company, with earnings per share expanding at a three-year annual growth rate of 84%.
Three years later, though, it was circling the drain. Its stock was just 10% of where it was in 2008.
The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 was the tidal shift for the company. RIM (and Balsillie and Lazaridis) shrugged off the threat, focusing on its enterprise customers. But as iPhone and Android be ..
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