Glenn and Jay Baruchel talk about their fantastic tech-based drama BlackBerry and how they knew that it would be a great movie from the beginning.
Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. The film is a fact-based account of Waterloo’s Ontario tech giant’s rise to prominence and subsequent fall, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It can easily compete with other similar films, such as The Social Network or TheBig Short – thanks to its intriguing storyline and Johnson’s direction. Here at JoBlo, we were lucky enough to speak to star Jay Baruchel about the film recently, and I guess the interview went pretty well, as we were invited to chat with him again – this time paired with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Glenn Howerton, who co-stars.Baruchel plays BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis, while Howerton plays the company’s co-CEO, Jim Basile. If you knew anything about the problems that occurred at the company, it was easy to portray Lazaridis as a hero and Basile the villain. Johnson’s film isn’t about to be that simple or predictable. Instead, it’s a layered account of greed and ambition and how tech changes so quickly that even the most prominent company can go from being an industry leader to a pariah overnight.Both Baruchel and Howerton seem justifiably proud of their work on the film, with them both singing the praises of director Johnson (
The Dirties
). It’s interesting because both Baruchel and Howerton have plenty of experience as filmmakers in their own right, as producers, writers and directors, so it was interesting to hear how they knew pretty early in the filming that the movie would turn out great – which it did.Check out my BlackBerry
review here, and make sure to catch the film in theaters! It’s now open!
