Antitrust (film)

The Television & Movie Wiki: for TV, celebrities, and movies.

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.

The film is a thriller portraying young idealistic programmers working at startup companies and a big closed source company (NURV) which offers money, a playful working environment and creative opportunites 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.

1 Trivia
2 Memorable Quotes
3 Sequel Rumors
4 External links

[edit]

Trivia

Tim Robbins' CEO character appears to be based on Microsoft founder Bill Gates, while at the same time exhibiting some of the trademark characteristics of Apple founder Steve Jobs.
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.
Some see similarities between the plot of the film and the conspiracy theories involving the death of Dutch software developer Jan Sloot.
Among the many computer programmers NURV spied on is a person wearing a noticeable red hat. This is an obvious reference to Red Hat in the software industry.

[edit]

Memorable Quotes

Gary Winston: Are we making CHEMICAL WEAPONS? KIDDIE PORN? Are we STRIP MINING? No!!!! Why are they after me?

Inspector: [looking for fingerprints on a keyboard] Dust the colon and the backslash key! Only geeks use those keys.

[edit]

Sequel Rumors

Ever since Sony acquired MGM, there have been rumors stating that a sequel to Antitrust will be made (despite the fact that the movie failed and lost a lot of money). Knowing the heated rivalry between Sony and Microsoft, many people find it natural that an Antitrust sequel is inevitable.

Some rumors even stated that the sequel will be set 8 years after the original wherein Gary Winston will be released from prison (on a legal technicality), return to NURV, rebuild his company and, with his intention on world domination, aggressively compete not only in the software business but also in video games (an obvious reference to Microsoft and its game consoles Xbox and Xbox 360) and digital music (possible reference to Apple's current domination with iPod).

There is no confirmation however if the rumors are true or not, and stars Ryan Phillippe, Rachael Leigh Cooke and Tim Robbins so far did not express interest in a sequel to Antitrust.

[edit]