Write On: 'Blackberry' Writers Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

Final Draft's Write On Podcast sits down with Blackberry writers Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller to talk about how they wrote this epic story of the rise and fall of the world's first portable email machine.

Johnson and Miller loosely adapted the script from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry. The film Blackberry is a bio-pic dramedy that follows the fictional story of the Blackberry creator Mike Lazaridis, played by Jay Baruchel and his main investor played by Glenn Howerton.

“Because we had the book, it was the blueprint for the movie. It has so many of the facts and details that we extrapolated and then sort of placed in the script," says Miller.

The production of the movie was a bit like the push to get Blackberry into the marketplace - there was a lot of hustle. “The structure of the movie as it stands came from needing to reuse the same locations over, and over again,” says Johnson.

We sat down to hear about this wild ride from true story to script to budgetary concerns and on-screen production. Click to hear more and listen to the podcast.