How filmmakers brought BlackBerry back from the grave

Hey, remember BlackBerry?

At its peak, around 43% of smartphone users in the US had a BlackBerry, and the company that invented it, RIM (Research in Motion), was worth an estimated $66 billion. Users, including then-US President Barack Obama and Kim Kardashian, were so hooked on it that people nicknamed it the CrackBerry. It was revolutionary.

BlackBerry filmmaker Matt Johnson says, “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. The BBM (BlackBerry Messenger app) 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.”

But within just three years of the launch of the iPhone, the Blackberry had become a punchline. “The phone people had before they had an iPhone,” Matt quips. In the new feature film BlackBerry, Matt and co-writer Matthew Miller cut through the noise and pump up the signal, drawing from the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff (2015) to reveal the truth behind BlackBerry’s spectacular rise and fall, with a touch of comedy and irony.

Now read on as Matthew, Matt, production designer Adam Belanger, and stars Jay Baruchel and Glen Howerton reveal how they brought BlackBerry back from the tech graveyard

Stream BlackBerry on Showmax now.

The three-way call

“The book had a lot of intricate details on business dealings and technology, which is a bit of a blind spot for us,” says Matthew. What really fascinated both him and Matt was the people. “People think that BlackBerry failed because the iPhone arrived on the scene and to some extent, that’s correct, but what was far more interesting to us was to dive into the human aspects and try to figure out why they couldn’t anticipate what iPhone would do to their company.”

The BlackBerry docu-drama begins back in 1996 in the early days of RIM, with founders and childhood friends Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (filmmaker Matt Johnson stepping in front of the camera) running a crew of engineers. RIM already has several patents (including one for a high-speed, digital film bar-code reader that won them an Academy Award in 1998). But it’s the arrival of Jim Balsillie (Glen Howerton) that ignites the spark. “Suddenly this brilliant but slightly amoral and ruthless businessman Jim Balsillie saw the potential of these two guys in this product,” says Matt. “It puts Mike in the middle of Doug, his best friend, and Jim, his business partner.”

Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton)

Matt struggled to find someone who felt right to play a man who, at least in the book, comes across as despicable, self-centred and power-hungry – someone Matt describes as a person who “consumes and consumes without tasting.”

It was up to Glen Howerton to bring the humanity back to Jim. “It fascinates me, understanding that mentality – men who feel like their primary goal is not to let anyone know that they’re not the greatest thing in the world,” says Glen. “For my character, I don’t think it’s as simple as his main motivation being power. I think he has a fear of not being the smartest guy in the room, whether it’s him discovering that or other people. That fear drives him and it comes out in anger.” Glen jokes that going bald for the role was a big help. “It makes me feel more adult and like someone you could trust with your finances.”

Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel)

Actor Jay Baruchel was one of the OG “CrackBerry kids”, and continued to use his own BlackBerry until as recently as 2020. “I don’t think Mike Lazaridis is the household name in Canada he perhaps should be, and I know Steve Jobs is,” says Jay. “I think we’re in a similar neighbourhood intellectually and philosophically, but it manifested in Mike in a very different way to me. He’s a real character, so singular in his interests. He’s one of those rare, once in a generation, people that can only do one thing but do it brilliantly. He’s basically the Hendrix (guitarist Jimmy Hendrix) of making phones.”

Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson)

“Losing the Signal” describes Doug as the glue that held RIM together. “He’s the reason everyone is excited to come to work,” says Matt. “Why do people work 80-hour weeks? Why are they willing to spend all their time doing this and get no credit? It’s because it has a culture that makes you want to be there, which is exactly what it’s like to make movies. It’s just you and your friends, all in it because you’re excited to make something together, and it seems like the most important thing in the world.”

As the company grows into a billion-dollar operation, though, Doug’s role, and the role of friendship and community, clashes with the drive for world domination.

Recreating RIM

Matt and Matthew’s production designer Adam Belanger had a twofold challenge ahead: resurrecting ancient technology, and recreating RIM’s factories and R&D facilities, which became top-secret as the company exploded into success.

The sets for RIM were constructed at Empire Steel, an old turbine plant in Hamilton, Ontario, which gave Adam access to everything from conference rooms, to a huge loading dock, all of which his team renovated over the course of six weeks. “When we arrived at Empire Steel, it was essentially abandoned, with raccoons living in nooks and crannies and wires hanging from the ceiling,” reveals Adam.

While the press in general were banned from RIM, Adam was able to track down archive material from Canada’s national broadcaster CBC, which had been allowed on-site to film a short documentary in the 2000s. They had to use their imaginations when it came to recreating RIM’s workspace from the 1990s, though. Knowing tech guys and engineers, they leaned heavily into their own memories of news and pop culture at the time. Look out for memorabilia featuring Ninja Turtles, John Carpenter movies and PC games like Baldur’s Gate and Command and Conquer.

“These were all games I was obsessed with as a kid,” says Matt. “It felt like a real way into that tech world because, at the time, these games were cutting edge. It was also a way to shoe-horn my own interests into a project.”

Resurrecting ancient tech

With the stage set, Adam and his team also spent 10 months researching and sourcing expired technology from the late 1990s to early 2000s. “Finding working technology from 15-20 years ago was definitely a challenge,” says Adam “We wanted it all, like real phone boxes. We needed chargers to make everything turn on. Luckily if you look hard enough, you can find collectors of this sort of tech online.” Adam often got lucky scouring postings on Craigslist. “I would say 80% of the tech you see on-screen was actually original and functional, and we made the rest from reference photos and videos,” he reveals.

Fun fact: Matt cast local filmmakers and artists in Toronto to play BlackBerry’s motley team of engineers, with his own real-life friends becoming Doug’s on-screen friends.