Whether you’re an entrepreneur yourself, you’re thinking of becoming one, or you simply enjoy success stories, watching business movies can be a fun, inspirational way to immerse yourself in a fascinating world. There are so many films out there that cover business-related matters, from all-time classics like Trading Places (1983), Risky Business (1983) and Wall Street (1987) to recent releases like The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Chef (2014), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). We made a list of five popular business movies that approach the topic from different angles, including some festival hits that you might not have heard of. Keep reading for our list of 5 popular business movies, ranked in alphabetical order!
1. The Founder (2016)
John Lee Hancock
The great Michael Keaton (Batman) plays the leading role in John Lee Hancock’s docudrama about the man who turned McDonald’s into the popular brand it is today. It all starts in San Bernardino, California, where struggling milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc (Keaton) goes to meet with with Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman) at their small burger restaurant. It’s 1954, and their business venture is but a small joint; yet Ray sees potential that might just turn this family-run establishment into a national, and global, venture. Like in most stories of this kind, the road to success isn’t easy, but The Founder takes an innovative approach to its storytelling that keeps audiences engaged, while also offering interesting insight into the origin story of one of the most well-known brands in the world.
Michael Keaton is exceptional in a role that earned him multiple award nominations back in 2016, and the rest of the cast shines too, from John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman as the brothers to Linda Cardellini, Laura Dern, B.J. Novak, Patrick Wilson, and more names you’ll recognize. The Founder also offers a compelling look at 1950s California from a business point of view: the team at Nielsen Valuation California mentioned it’s one of their favorite business movies of all time. Whether you’re watching it for its central subject, the talent in front and behind the camera, or just as an entertaining watch, you won’t be disappointed.
2. Jerry Maguire (1996)
Cameron Crowe
A bright and quick witted sports agent has a moral crisis and passionately tells his colleagues exactly what he thinks about what they’re doing at the company. The agent is fired, but that might be just what he needs to achieve real greatness, and find out who he is in the process. The premise is simple, but a clever script and fantastic performances turned this 1996 movie from writer-director Cameron Crowe into one of the most popular and quotable business movies ever.
We’re talking, of course, of Jerry Maguire, where Tom Cruise absolutely steals the scene one “you had me at hello” at a time. After being fired, Jerry teams up with the one person who’s crazy enough to follow him, single mother Dorothy (Renée Zellweger), and starts his own management firm. With only one client in their books, football player Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), our two rebels-turned-company owners face multiple challenges while also inevitably falling for each other. If you’re looking for a lighthearted classic that will both inspire you and make you think, look no further than Jerry Maguire.
3. The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher
The most popular movie on our list is David Fincher’s The Social Network, made even more well-known by the popularity of its subject itself: the titular social network. Based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book “The Accidental Billionaires,” The Social Network tells the story of how a young Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his roommate/best friend/Facebook co-creator Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) invented Facebook as college students at Harvard, and how their small social experiment eventually turned into the profitable business that it is now.
That, alone, would already be a very compelling story, but David Fincher takes the extra step to make his movie unforgettable: he sets it over two different timelines. As we watch Mark and Eduardo at work with equations and algorithms, we are also shown the modern-day timeline, when Zuckerberg is facing not one but multiple lawsuits, including one from Saverin himself. As not long after leaving college Mark teams up with Napster creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) to set up an actual company in Menlo Park, California, we start to understand why Zuckerberg and Saverin would eventually fall out.
Both timelines are gripping and fast-paced, and Fincher knows exactly when to introduce new pieces of information in each in order to keep us more intrigued. The Social Network is the rare business movie that manages to be both informative and incredibly entertaining, and the one film you’ll find yourself coming back to over and over again.
4. BlackBerry (2024)
Matt Johnson
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The most recent release on our list tells the story of how the world’s first smartphone was born. Based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book “Losing the Signal,” writer-director-star Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry begins in Waterloo, Ontario, where the titular company would soon be born. But first, we are introduced to two tech wizards who have absolutely no idea of how to run a business, so much so that they are, in fact, being scammed that very moment by a company that has no intention of paying them for what they’ve been creating. But Douglas Fregin (Johnson), Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and their team of underdogs are about to stumble upon a much more important invention.
It takes a meeting with an out of luck businessman named Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) to get it all started: Douglas and Mike’s idea for a portable device that would work both as a pager and as a mobile phone turns into something that has the potential to fill a gap in the market. But will a company that’s held together by so many people who each want a different thing be able to survive a competitive market, especially when an even more influential tech giant is about to emerge?
5. The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley (2019)
Alex Gibney
If you’re familiar with the name Elizabeth Holmes, you might have seen her played by Amanda Seyfried in the 2022 series The Dropout. But some readers will remember her for the scandal that saw this self-made businesswoman be convicted for fraud in 2018. But what’s most astonishing about this whole case is Holmes’s rise to fame, a few years before, with a multibillion-dollar tech company that was built around lies.
It all started with an invention that was born of Holmes’ fear of needles. When the titular “inventor” left college, she founded a company in Palo Alto, California, that sought to perform blood tests by taking only a drop of blood from a person’s finger, thanks to a machine of her creation that she believed had the potential to revolutionize blood testing. Holmes teamed up with a series of advisors, and initially, it did just that. The company was renamed Theranos, the machines were made, and thanks to a partnership with Walgreens, they became available to everyone. Holmes was heralded as the next Steve Jobs… Until she wasn’t.
From director Alex Gibney, HBO’s The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley is one of the most gripping business documentaries you’ll ever watch. With a truly unbelievable true story, the film delves into the dangers of believing charismatic people and investing in the ‘Silicon Valley’ model – one that saw many start-ups rise to fame – without asking the right questions. On top of this, it’s also an interesting character study of a woman who deceived an entire country by carefully creating a ‘persona’ that catered exactly to what the industry was looking for. Not to be missed!
There are plenty of business movies out there, but you’re bound to find something of interest in the 5 popular films listed above, from timeless classics like Jerry Maguire and acclaimed hits like The Social Network to newer releases like The Founder, BlackBerry, and The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley. Happy watching!