It was loosely adapted from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.

[5][6] The film is a dramatized account of the history of the BlackBerry line of mobile phones created by co-founders Douglas Fregin and Mike Lazaridis, and investor Jim Balsillie.

The film also stars Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside, Martin Donovan, Michelle Giroux, SungWon Cho, Mark Critch, Saul Rubinek, and Cary Elwes in supporting roles.

[8] In Waterloo, Ontario in 1996, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis and his best friend and co-founder Douglas Fregin prepare to pitch their "PocketLink" cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie.

After joining RIM, Balsillie discovers that the company is in a dire financial position and he mortgages his house to add a cash infusion to make payroll.

Balsillie, a hockey fan with a long-term ambition of owning an NHL team, is occupied with trying to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins, forcing Lazaridis to pitch the Bold with Fregin instead.

He prioritizes the Penguins but is rejected when the NHL owners reveal knowledge of his plan to move the team to Hamilton, which they learned of through his boasting to Yankowski.

The US SEC raid RIM after learning that Balsillie hired the engineers in 2003 with illegally backdated stock options, threatening Lazaridis with legal action.

As he begins manually fixing the buzzing phones one by one, the closing titles reveal that the Storms were almost universally inoperable and Verizon sued RIM to cover the financial loss.

The website's consensus reads: "With intelligence as sharp as its humor, BlackBerry takes a terrifically entertaining look at the rise and fall of a generation-defining gadget.

[29] Jim Balsillie said his on-screen depiction as an aggressive and amoral businessman is almost entirely fictional, but praised the film and described Howerton's performance as "brilliant".