Noticed an uptick in business biopics over the past two years? You’re not alone: Hollywood added several dramatized biz disasters to its portfolio recently, chronicling everything from shared workspace rentals to magical blood testing to sneakers. We gathered some of our favorites that you can stream right now, or at least when you clock out.
Flamin’ Hot (2023)
The most recent business biopic is a true-crunch drama, recounting the industry-disrupting rise of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, which may or may not have been invented by Frito-Lay janitor Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia). Flamin’ Hot marks ex-Desperate Housewive Eva Longoria’s directorial debut and stars Tony Shalhoub, Dennis Haysbert, and Matt Walsh. Up next: Nacho Destiny: The Doritos Story.
Air (2023)
It’s hard to believe now, but Nike was on the verge of going out of business in 1984—enter NBA rookie Michael Jordan and the ultimate sneaker, the Air Jordan. Air is a crackling biz-o-pic directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars as Nike CEO Phil Knight. Nike’s Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), along with Knight, helped make Jordan’s (Damian Young) namesake kicks legend.
BlackBerry (2023)
The shady dealings behind the once-ubiquitous-to-now-extinct BlackBerry cellphone are played to powerful effect by Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton, respectively, as nerdy co-inventor Mike Lazaridis and ruthless co-CEO Jim Balsillie. BlackBerry was riding high in the early-’00s until the arrival of the iPhone and in-company malfeasance brought the company down—BlackBerry is a smart and funny bio-drama.
Tetris (2023)
In the late ‘80s, a Dutch entrepreneur (Taron Edgerton) made the risky move of traveling to the Soviet Union to help a Russian software engineer (Nikita Efremov) streamline and launch the video game Tetris. It paid off as Tetris went on to become one of the most popular games in history. Tetris mixes a Cold War aesthetic with a period-perfect soundtrack, making for a movie as fun as the game itself.
WeCrashed (2022)
WeCrashed is one of the most notorious business biopics of recent years, thanks mostly to Jared Leto’s over-the-top portrayal of WeWork office-space startup CEO Adam Neumann. Fortunately, Anne Hathaway balances him out with her more nuanced performance as Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, who’s no less driven (or delusional) in WeWork’s vision of a shared-office-space utopia. It’s eight episodes long, but it works.
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (2022)
Set up as the first installment of a Super Pumped anthology series about spectacular business flameouts, The Battle for Uber still has us waiting for the second, about Facebook. The Battle for Uber, as the name implies, follows the rocky rise of rideshare startup Uber and its tech-bro CEO Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt). The hilarious highlight of The Battle: Uma Thurman as Ariana Huffington.
The Dropout (2022)
Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes (played here to spooky perfection by Amanda Seyfried) built a $9 billion blood-testing biotech company out of thin air and Yoda quotes; The Dropout captures the absurdity of it all in eight darkly comic episodes. Seyfried fantastically conveys the escalating desperation with costars William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf, and Mary Lynn Rajskub, making The Dropout the best of the biz batch.
Bonus: Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
Way back in the 20th Century, TNT premiered one of the first big-tech bio-dramas: Pirates of Silicon Valley, the story of the personal computer revolution rivalry between Apple’s Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) and Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall). The real Gates and Jobs gave Pirates of Silicon Valley a passing grade, while Jobs’ partner Steve Wozniak raved, “My god! That’s just how it was … I loved watching it.”
Bill Frost has been a journalist and TV reviewer since the 4:3-aspect-ratio ’90s. His pulse-pounding prose has been featured in The Salt Lake Tribune, Inlander, Coachella Valley Independent, Las Vegas Weekly, and many other dead-tree publications (see BillFrost.tv). In addition to being a Senior Staff Writer at CableTV.com, Bill is a syndicated streaming TV columnist forSalt Lake City Weekly and other alternative weeklies, and host/producer of TV Tan Podcast. By night, Bill cranks a Flying V with his band at the bar.
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