Corporations are people. The Supreme Court said so. Basically—back it 2010, when it clarified that businesses have the same First Amendment rights as actual people. It kind of tracks: a lifetime spent swimming in brands has made our relationships with corporations as vital as any we share with flesh-and-blood humans. So why not make some biopics about them?
The biopic is a time-honored, essential cinematic genre, going back at least to 1900 and Georges Méliès’ take on the life of Joan of Arc. It’s not surprising that the corporate biopic, a film that charts the rise and/or fall of a company (and the people who lead it), is a growing sub-genre, given we all live in their thrall. Given the emergence of AI and the ever-increasing presence of corporations in our lives, soon individual humans will be entirely obsolete. Which, admittedly, sounds a little dire...but these movies are all actually pretty good.
The Founder (2016)
The Founder Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Michael Keaton Movie HD
The business: McDonald’s Corporation
The story of businessman Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), The Founder traces the rise of...not the actual founders of McDonald’s, who Kroc pretty well screwed over, but the guy who turned it into a global (but distinctly American) franchise. The film smartly is ambiguous about whether or not we’re meant to view Kroc as a villain. It’s certainly true the McDonalds brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) would never have turned their little restaurant into a multi-billion dollar chain on their own, and the story of the rise of a global icon is both culturally important and genuinely interesting. The film understands that, while there might be great successes in American-style capitalism, there aren’t any heroes.
Where to stream: Netflix
The Social Network (2010)
THE SOCIAL NETWORK - Official Trailer [2010] (HD)
The business: Facebook
Facebook, while still more-or-less at the top of the heap of social media, seems slightly quaint from our 2023-perspective—sort of like a gateway drug to more overtly destructive forms of the medium. Still, its rise very much feels like one of the key developments on the road from there to here and, if David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) seemed an odd choice of director at the time, the rather horrific impact that social media has had on our culture and politics in the years since make him seem like a perfect choice, and a sage: the movie is as timely as it was when it released, almost 15 years ago.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Guru (2007)
Abhishek Bachchan is Unstoppable | Guru | Movie Scene | Aishwarya Rai
The business: Reliance Industries
This biopic depicts the rise of the “Shakti Corporation” and its founder Gurukant Desai—in reality, thinly veiled stand-ins for multinational Reliance Industries, currently the largest public company in India, and its founder, Dhirubhai Ambani. Like the real-life business mogul, the movie’s Guru begins life in a small Indian village before making it big in polyester (a topic dramatized unexpectedly well here) and going on to conquer India’s business scene. It’s a brilliantly made and entertaining film, but it argues that the ethics scandals that plagued Guru/Ambani in later years were simply the result of a simple villager trying to rise through a corrupt system. That bit isn’t entirely convincing.
Where to stream: Netflix
Joy (2015)
JOY | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX
The business: Clean Boss (also, infomercials)
Jennifer Lawrence earned an Oscar nomination (and won a Golden Globe) for her performance as Joy Mangano, inventor and entrepreneur behind, most memorably, the Miracle Mop. As depicted in the film, Mangano goes from a struggling airline booking agent supporting her kids, her mother, and her ex-husband by spinning her talent for invention into lucrative deals with QVC and HSN, and the founding of her own companies. Lawrence gives a great performance in a decent movie, but it’s also an antidote to the boardroom-centric, male-dominated stories of other American business successes.
Where to stream: Freevee
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) Official Trailer 1 - Will Smith Movie
The business: Gardner Rich & Co
Chris Gardner’s company might not be a conglomerate quite on the level of some of the others represented here, at least in terms of name recognition, but it’s hard to argue that the story of his rise isn’t among the most compelling. Will Smith plays the prodigy, whose spent a year living on the streets of San Francisco before finding an in with a brokerage firm—a job that ultimately led him to form his own company, which grew into a multimillion dollar concern before Gardner sold his stake in 2006.
Where to stream: Netflix
Tetris (2023)
Tetris — Official Trailer | Apple TV+
The business: The Tetris Company
The story of the rise of Tetris isn’t really comparable to any other business movie, nor to any other video game origin story you might have seen or read. Taron Egerton as Dutch/Indonesian developer Henk Rogers, who came across Tetris at the Consumer Electronic Show in 1988. The game was created by a programmer with Soviet state-owned company ELORG, while the distribution rights had been sold to a British game publisher that had, in turn, outsourced the rights to Nintendo in Japan. The film follows Rogers through the very entertaining (at least to an observer) labyrinth of an international video game market in the middle of the cold war, all while under the very watchful eye of the KGB.
Where to stream: Apple TV+
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street Official Trailer
The business: Stratton Oakmont, Inc.
Martin Scorsese’s ode to the coke-fueled excess of 1980s capitalism (as distinguished from the Provigil, Adderall, and Xanax -fueled excess of the 2020s) stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, who founded brokerage house Stratton Oakmont largely on the strength of his pump-and-dump skills—referring not to a popular sex practice of the era (though there was plenty of that, as well), but instead the trick of buying a penny stock and artificially inflating its price by, essentially, lying, and then flipping them while high (the stocks and, usually, the brokers too). It’s a real rise-and-fall kinda deal.
Where to stream: Prime Video, Paramount+
Citizen Kane (1941)
Citizen Kane - How to Run a Newspaper Scene (3/10) | Movieclips
The business: Hearst Communications
If anything, even less thinly veiled than Guru, Citizen Kane plays fast and loose with the personal life of William Randolph Hearst (sorry: Charles Foster Kane), in part by blending his story with that of a couple of other prominent media moguls of the era. The movie does a more thorough job charting the rise of Hearst Communications, albeit it with a fictional gloss.
Starting with the purchase of the tiny San Francisco Daily Examiner, Hearst increased its circulation by millions through a canny mix of sensationalism, faux populism, and clever poaching of journalists from other publications. Hearst’s, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war,” regarding Cuba, becomes Kane’s, “You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war,” but they both capture the moment when old-style yellow journalism began to shift into the headlines-at-all-cost media environment we know and hate today.
Where to stream: HBO Max
BlackBerry (2023)
BlackBerry - Official Trailer ft. Jay Baruchel & Glenn Howerton | HD | IFC Films
The business: BlackBerry, of course.
This one’s not even out yet, but it’s worth a mention, especially as its received spectacular reviews out of the recent Berlin International Film Festival. Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton play the leads in the story of the once-ubiquitous planner/smartphone that became an afterthought before dying an ignominious death (murdered by the iPhone).
Where to stream: TBD
Air (2023)
AIR | Official Trailer
The business: Nike, Inc. and the Air Jordan
It took me a while to wrap my head around the idea of a movie about the origin of the Air Jordan shoe, in which Michael Jordan himself is more or less an afterthought. But of course, the business of the birth of the most iconic sneaker in modern history began with Sonny Vaccaro (played here by Ben Affleck) and company founder Phil Knight (Matt Damon), who was on the verge of shuttering the Nike’s basketball shoe division entirely before coming up with the idea to woo Jordan, arguably (probably) the greatest basketball player of all time.
Where to stream: Nowhere yet, but the movie was financed by Amazon, and was conceived as a Prime original, so there’s a good chance you’ll be seeing it there before long.
