Get ready for a movie based on the rise and fall of BlackBerry

For a while, BlackBerry phones were the phones to have, used corporate bigwigs and heads of state to answer emails and do tasks they couldn’t normally do on other cell phones. Those days are long gone. Now, film studios want relive the rise and fall of the company from the time it was still known as Research in Motion until it lost its fight against Google and Apple in a new movie. According to Variety, the upcoming film that’s simply entitled BlackBerry is directed by Operation Avalanche director Matt Johnson and has recently wrapped production. 

It stars Jay Baruchel (This Is The End) and Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Variety says. And though it’s not confirmed, they’re likely playing the company’s founders and co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. The screenplay is based on the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by The Globe and Mail reporters Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. Since the book was published in 2015, the movie likely won’t include all the failed attempts to revive the brand that happened in the years thereafter. 

In 2019, TCL manufactured new BlackBerry phones until the company decided not to renew its contract and stopped selling the devices merely a year later. Security startup OnwardMobility then announced that it was planning to release a 5G BlackBerry smartphone with a physical keyboard in 2021 for North America and Europe. In the end, however, those plans never came to fruition. OnwardMobility reportedly lost its license to use the BlackBerry name and ultimately shut down the company in February this year.