20 movies and miniseries about inventors, inventions, and innovation

Nike was not doing too hot in the ‘80s until a man saw a tape of a young Michael Jordan and bet everything he had on him. The result was not just the creation of the Air Jordans, one of the most popular shoes in the world, but the story of how Sonny Vaccaro and Jordan’s mother, Deloris, turned a basketball player into an everlasting brand.

J. Robert Oppenheimer had one of the most brilliant minds and used it to create something not so brilliant: the atomic bomb. 2023’s Oppenheimer breaks down the road that led the theoretical physicist to that creation and the inner demons he felt because of it.

Video games have become so ingrained into the lives of Americans that it almost feels like it’s long overdue for movies like Tetris, but alas, the story of how the block-centric game came to be finally landed into place in 2023.

Those in the scientific realm get a lot of shine in theaters, but the world can’t forget about mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan, wonderfully portrayed on the big screen in The Man Who Knew Infinity by Dev Patel. In it, moviegoers watch as a man working low-wage jobs finds himself at Cambridge University.

According to Google, almost 1.5 billion people own an iPhone. To put that into perspective, China and India have around 1.4 billion citizens each. All of that is because of Apple’s Steve Jobs, and there have been a few movies made about the man behind the tech giant, but Michael Fassbender’s is the one really worth the watch.

Paul Bettany is best known today as Vision from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but before that, he played another pretty intellectual being: Charles Darwin in Creation. You know, the man who basically wrote the book about evolution and how man came to be, yeah, that gift to science.

Long before shows like Shark Tank , products like the Miracle Mop had to be peddled on infomercials. It was alongside QVC, but Jennifer Lawrence’s job in Joy wasn’t just to tell the story of how the Miracle Mop came to be but to showcase every single bump in the road Joy Mangano faced along the way, from financial mishaps to family turmoil.

One often associates computers with the turn of the 21st century, but they had been around for quite sometime before that, dating back to the 1800s. However, computer scientist Alan Turing made a name for himself by utilizing them during World War II, decrypting messages.

In one of the many roles that Leonardo DiCaprio could’ve won an Oscar for, he starred as Howard Hughes, an aviation innovator.

Love him or hate him, the story behind Mark Zuckerberg and how Facebook came to be is one for the books — and the reason  The Social Network was a huge hit.

When people talk about minds so grand they’re almost unbelievable, there are very few names that can be said alongside Stephen Hawking’s. However, while so much was known of his studies and contributions to the world of science, The Theory of Everything showcased a whole new side of the man with an impressive brain.

It was only a matter of time before the world learned how Flamin’ Hot Cheetos came to be.

While movies like Ford v Ferrari exist, this Tesla is not about the vehicle but rather the life of the genius it’s named after, Nikola Tesla.

It’s hard to imagine a world in which McDonald’s doesn’t exist, but thankfully The Founder lets the world know just why billions have been served.

Beanie Babies are one of the most unnecessary products, but they were quite the phenomenon in the late ‘90s — so much so that, in recent years, documentaries have taken people inside the mayhem. The Beanie Bubble , starring Zach Galifianakis as the Beanie Baby creator, Ty Warner, also did.

Radioactivity may never have gotten to where it is today without physicist and chemist Marie Curie.

National Lampoon helped put a lot of comedic actors on the map, from John Belushi to Chevy Chase, but the story of its cofounder, Douglas Kenney, was anything but. Despite a tragic end, the Netflix original showcases the poignant comedy writer's many highs and ultimate lows.

Back in the 1940s, there weren't a lot of celebrities to make biopics about just yet, so the next obvious option was significant inventors like Thomas Edison, whose contributions to the world include the light bulb and phonograph.

Madam C.J. Walker's life was paved with hardships. She lost both her parents by the age of six and wound up marrying someone at 14 to escape the abuse of her brother-in-law. She rose above every negative thing thrown her way through to become the first self-made, Black female millionaire. Her story was depicted by Octavia Spencer in a Netflix miniseries about how she became not only a millionaire but a pioneer in hair care.

There are movies about how Apple came to be. Now, there's one dedicated to BlackBerry. When is the unbreakable Nokia getting its time to shine?