The tech industry loves to sell a myth: that great products emerge fully formed from brilliant ideas. In reality, building something meaningful in tech is messy, uncertain, and often driven by failure as much as ambition.
That tension — between vision and execution — has made its way into film and television, where stories about founders, engineers, and outsiders trying to build the “next big thing” reveal what it actually takes to create technology that matters.
Here are the best movies and TV shows that capture what it’s really like to build a tech product to watch in 2026.
Movies
/1. The Social Network (2010)
If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when someone decides a conventional career isn’t enough, this is where to start. The Social Network traces the founding of Facebook by a young, restless Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard peers, making one thing clear: world-changing companies rarely begin in boardrooms. They begin in dorm rooms – fuelled by ambition, conflict, and a willingness to ignore the rulebook entirely.
Directed by David Fincher, the film carries a cold, surgical energy that mirrors Silicon Valley itself. You watch Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin build something from code and conviction and then watch their relationship fracture under the weight of it.
/2. The Imitation Game (2014)
The Imitation Game takes us back to one of the most important moments in computing history: the effort at Bletchley Park to crack the Nazi Enigma code during World War II, led by the mathematician Alan Turing.
Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, begins as a purely theoretical thinker — someone more comfortable with abstract problems than real-world systems. By the end, he has translated that abstraction into a working machine, effectively laying the groundwork for modern computing.
The Imitation Game is a reminder that innovation often starts with a problem, not a product. Turing didn’t set out to build a computer; he set out to solve an urgent challenge. In doing so, he created something far more enduring.
/3. Jobs (2013) & Steve Jobs (2015)
These two films are best understood as a pair — different interpretations of the same figure, each revealing something the other leaves out.
Jobs (2013), starring Ashton Kutcher, traces the broader arc of Steve Jobs’ life, leaning into the mythology: the rise, the fall, and the eventual return. In contrast, Steve Jobs (2015), directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, takes a more surgical approach. Structured around a series of product launches, it strips Jobs down to his contradictions – brilliant, difficult, and relentlessly exacting.
What both films make clear is that the most transformative figures in tech are not always the most technical. Jobs’ strength wasn’t engineering; it was taste. His obsession with user experience, design, and the intersection of technology and the humanities shaped everything Apple built under his leadership.
/4. BlackBerry (2023)
The rise and fall of BlackBerry is one of the most instructive stories in consumer tech, and this 2023 film captures it with unusual clarity. It follows Research In Motion, the company that effectively created the modern smartphone and, for a time, dominated the global market.
At its peak, the BlackBerry was the device of choice for executives, presidents, and celebrities — until the arrival of the iPhone reset expectations.
What the film does particularly well is focus on the human dynamics behind the collapse. Internal power struggles, overconfidence from market dominance, and a reluctance to take new competitors seriously slowly erode what was once a clear technological lead.
/5. Ready Player One (2018)
Set in 2045, when economic and social pressures have pushed people into a fully immersive virtual world, Ready Player One explores life inside the OASIS — a sprawling digital universe that functions as both escape and economy. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film offers one of the more accessible visions of how virtual reality, identity, and online culture could converge.
The protagonist, Wade Watts, succeeds not through resources but through a deeper understanding of the culture and systems that power the OASIS. That distinction matters. In platform-driven ecosystems, technical knowledge alone isn’t enough — context, community, and timing often determine who wins.
For anyone interested in gaming, XR, or platform design, Ready Player One works as a thought experiment.
TV Shows
/6. Silicon Valley (2014-2019)
Few shows have captured the absurdity of startup culture as well as Silicon Valley. It follows Richard Hendricks and his team at Pied Piper as they try to turn a breakthrough compression algorithm into a viable company, navigating venture capital, corporate pressure, endless pivots, and the social awkwardness that often comes with technical brilliance.
Silicon Valley is as close as most people will get to experiencing startup life without building a company themselves. It teaches the language of startups, but more importantly, it captures the emotional reality of building under constant uncertainty.
Whether you’re a founder, engineer, product manager, or investor, there’s a good chance you’ll recognise parts of your own experience in it.
/7. Mr. Robot (2015-2019)
At the centre is Elliot Alderson, played by Rami Malek, a cybersecurity engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. Through him, the series explores questions of power, surveillance, corporate control, and the ethics of using technology as a tool for disruption.
For a field that is often abstract or opaque, Mr. Robot makes cybersecurity legible. It offers a grounded look at everything from penetration testing and social engineering to incident response and digital forensics.
For professionals, it’s validating; for newcomers, it’s one of the clearest windows into what the work actually involves.
/8. Halt and Catch Fire (2014–2017)
Set during the personal computing boom of the 1980s, Halt and Catch Fire follows a group of engineers, executives, and visionaries as they navigate the rise of IBM-compatible PCs, the early internet, and the foundations of the modern digital economy.
While it operates as a period drama, the show is less about technology itself and more about the people building it. It focuses on ambition, reinvention, and the personal cost of trying to create something new in an industry that moves faster than its participants.
The series offers one of the most nuanced portrayals of women in tech, particularly through the arcs of Cameron and Donna, whose leadership, conflicts, and evolution reflect challenges that remain relevant across the industry.
/9. Devs (2020)
Created by Alex Garland, Devs centres on a secretive quantum computing division inside a Silicon Valley tech company, where a small team of elite engineers is building a system that pushes the boundaries of computation.
While the premise leans into science fiction, the themes are increasingly grounded in reality.
As quantum computing moves from theoretical research toward early-stage application, Devs explores what it means to develop technologies capable of modelling — or even predicting — human behaviour at scale.
Jemi Motesho
