What happened to BlackBerry? New movie chronicles the Canadian story of world’s first smartphone

The trailer for a new biopic about Canada’s darling tech company BlackBerry dropped Wednesday — and it’s way funnier than you might expect.

“BlackBerry” stars Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton as Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEOs of Waterloo region-based firm Research In Motion who created the world’s first smartphone.

Co-written by Matt Miller and director Matt Johnson, the movie follows the meteoric rise and subsequent destruction of the Canadian company. It’s based on the 2015 book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.”

Despite being widely remembered for the company’s implosion following the rise of the iPhone, Miller called BlackBerry “some of the best of what Canada is capable of.”

“To me they’re a huge success story. I know people think they’re a bit of a joke because of their rapid downfall, but they also had a meteoric rise,” Miller said in a statement shared by Elevation Pictures, the Canadian distributor of the film.

In addition to the common narrative of BlackBerry being out-innovated by Apple, Miller and Johnson’s rendition also hints at the internal conflicts, personal grievances and shady business dealings that eventually tore the company apart.

Meanwhile, Johnson said he was excited by the Canadian aspect of the show, despite being disconnected from social media and never having personally owned a BlackBerry. “Before we started, all I knew about BlackBerry was that they were from Waterloo, Ontario, but I was really excited by that,” he said in the same statement.

“The BlackBerry was the status symbol of the early-2000s and at the beginning of the social-media era, it made you part of a group,” Johnson continued. “The BBM perfectly captured that, like you can’t talk to somebody on BBM unless you both have Blackberries, it opened up a new way of communicating, way before Instagram DMs or Snapchat.”

“BlackBerry” will hit theatres across Canada on May 12.

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