Matt Johnson’s acclaimed BlackBerry film is getting turned into a three-part CBC limited series next week, and to celebrate, a special pop-up will open in Toronto.
From November 8th to 10th at the Toronto Eaton Centre, the ‘BlackBerry Museum’ will chart the history of the iconic Canadian phone brand with displays and props from BlackBerry. CBC says there will also be themed photo opportunities and a “nostalgia-inducing BBM type-off challenge” with prizes. The pop-up was conceived by Initiative Media and produced by Makers.
CBC’s BlackBerry series is an extended version of the BlackBerry film that opened in theatres earlier this year and features several minutes of never-before-seen footage. Johnson and Matthew Miller, his co-writer and producer on the film, prepared the film with the inevitable series version in mind so it fits into a neat three-act structure.
BlackBerry tells the story of Mike Lazaridis (Montreal’s Jay Baruchel) and Jim Ballsillie (Glenn Howerton), the co-CEOs of Research in Motion (RIM) who spearheaded the creation of the BlackBerry line of phones. The series charts their early days at RIM up until the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in 2007. BlackBerry is based on Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by former The Globe and Mail reporters Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff.
All three episodes of BlackBerry will premiere on CBC Gem on November 9th. The service is available for free with ads or $4.99/month for an ad-free Premium membership. The first episode will also premiere on CBC TV on November 9th at 9pm ET, with new episodes weekly.
For more on BlackBerry, check out our review of the film version and interview with Johnson, Baruchel and Howerton.
Image credit: CBC
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