The BlackBerry is coming back – if only in the cinema: The docudrama “BlackBerry” tells the story of the rise and fall of the famous smartphone brand from the Canadian company Research In Motion. After the film only recently ran at the Berlinale 2023, the first trailer is now available. The film focuses on the tech nerd Mike Lazaridis (played by Jay Baruchel) and the businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who together in 1996 wanted to turn the mobile phone market upside down with a revolutionary idea: the BlackBerry was back then thanks to a real keyboard, Text messages and access to the Internet were quite successful, especially in the business sector, but were ultimately pushed out of the market by competition from Apple & Co.
Of course, The Dirties director Matt Johnson’s latest work is primarily about the business and personal conflicts of the very unequal RIM CEOs. The film’s screenplay is based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.
In addition to Baruchel, Howerton and Matt Johnson himself, Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, Michael Ironside, Rich Sommer and SungWon Cho also star in BlackBerry. The film is expected to start in German cinemas in spring 2023, but an exact date has not yet been set.
