Antitrust (film)

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Movie poster.

Antitrust is a 2001 film directed by Peter Howitt and written by Howard Franklin. The cast included Ryan Phillippe, Rachael Leigh Cook, Claire Forlani, Tim Robbins, Douglas McFerran, Richard Roundtree, Tygh Runyan, and Yee Jee Tso.

[edit] Plot

The film is a thriller portraying young idealistic programmers working at startup companies and a large corporation (NURV) which offers money, a playful working environment and creative opportunities to talented programmers if they are willing to work for them. The charismatic CEO of NURV seems at first to be good natured, but eventually the hero of the story starts to unravel the terrible hidden truth of NURV's operation. The film concludes with the collapse of NURV and the arrest of NURV CEO Gary Winston.

[edit] Trivia

Several Dandy Warhols songs appear in this movie.
Tim Robbins' CEO character appears to be based on Apple founder Steve Jobs, while at the same time exhibiting some of the trademark characteristics of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Then-Sun CEO Scott McNealy makes a cameo appearance.
Miguel de Icaza makes a cameo appearance. Behind the scenes, Miguel assisted in designing the computer screenshots (in GNOME) used in the movie.
Phillippe and Cook's characters are shown pumping their own gasoline. The movie's story takes place in Portland, Oregon, and it is illegal for customers to pump their own gasoline in the state of Oregon.
After the movie's release, savvy netizens tried to look up NURV's "website". Apparently, hacker pranksters had created redirect websites so when people typed in www.nurv.(org/com/net), they were redirected to Microsoft's website. Also, some WHOIS lookups of these websites referred to Microsoft's address of its head office in Redmond, Washington.
One of the characters was also called Redmond, near the end of the movie, alluding to Microsoft's head office.
Parts of the movie depicting the Nurv campus were filmed at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia