Boardrooms, betrayals, and billion-dollar bets. These films and documentaries chronicle the real figures who built the companies, brands, and fortunes that shaped the modern world, from Silicon Valley garages to fast-food franchises to Wall Street trading floors.
The full ranking
Boardrooms, betrayals, and billion-dollar bets. These films and documentaries chronicle the real figures who built the companies, brands, and fortunes that shaped the modern world, from Silicon Valley garages to fast-food franchises to Wall Street trading floors.
The Social Network
David Fincher's 2010 account of Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, scripted by Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich's book. It won three Academy Awards and remains the definitive portrait of Silicon Valley ambition, betrayal, and the messy question of who owns an idea.
The Founder
The 2016 film starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the salesman who wrested McDonald's from its founders and built a global franchise empire. A sharp, unsettling look at the difference between inventing something and owning it.
Pirates of Silicon Valley
A 1999 TNT docudrama tracing the parallel rises of Apple and Microsoft through the rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, from the garage years to the PC wars. Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall give the film an irreverent energy that holds up decades later.
BlackBerry (2023)
Matt Johnson's kinetic 2023 drama chronicles the rise and fall of Research In Motion, the Waterloo company that invented the smartphone before losing it all. Jay Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis and Glenn Howerton plays Jim Balsillie, and the film won 14 Canadian Screen Awards including Best Picture.
Tetris (2023)
Taron Egerton stars as Dutch video game entrepreneur Henk Rogers, who battled Soviet bureaucrats and competing corporate interests to secure the rights to Tetris and bundle it with the Game Boy. A surprisingly gripping Cold War thriller built around a puzzle game.
Steve Jobs
Danny Boyle's 2015 film, scripted by Aaron Sorkin, structures Apple's story as three backstage confrontations before major product launches, with Michael Fassbender as a compelling, driven, and often cruel Jobs. A portrait of genius and its human cost.
Air (2023)
Ben Affleck directs and Matt Damon stars as Nike basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro, who fought internal skeptics to sign an unknown Michael Jordan to what became the Air Jordan line. A crowd-pleasing drama about one of the most consequential sponsorship deals in sports history.
Flash of Genius
Greg Kinnear plays Bob Kearns, the Detroit engineer who invented the intermittent windshield wiper, in this 2008 drama about his decade-long legal battle against Ford after the company adopted his design without credit or payment. A quiet, precise study in what it costs to be right.
Joy (2015)
David O. Russell directs Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano, the Long Island inventor who created the self-wringing Miracle Mop and built a home-products empire through QVC. Lawrence won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her performance.
Moneyball
Bennett Miller's 2011 film stars Brad Pitt as Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who used sabermetric analysis to compete against richer teams on a shoestring budget. Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian's script turns baseball economics into gripping drama.
Ranked across 3 sources: Collider · Brand Biopics 2023; BYVI · Best Entrepreneur Movies 2024; Growth Navigate · Best Business Movies 2024. Full scoring is on the Methodology tab above.
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