Before Silicon Slopes, there was WordPerfect. New show details company that changed Utah

02 Aug 2026, 03:00 by John Clyde ksl contributor · KSL.com

Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

WordPerfect once dominated the global word-processing market, shaping Utah's tech landscape.
The documentary "IN THE BEGINNING/Master" explores WordPerfect's impact on Utah's tech sector.
Filmmakers highlight WordPerfect's rivalry with Microsoft and founders' commitment to Utah's economy.

OREM — For many Utahns under the age of 40, the name WordPerfect might not mean much.

That fact surprises filmmakers Scott and Jake Featherstone. Because long before there was Silicon Slopes — before billion-dollar startups, before Utah became one of the fastest-growing technology hubs in America — there was WordPerfect.

According to the father-son filmmaking team behind the new documentary "IN THE BEGINNING/Master," the story of WordPerfect is really the story of modern Utah.

"WordPerfect and Novell changed Utah Valley from a Geneva Steel and agricultural economy to a high-tech economy," Scott Featherstone said. "Those two companies started the groundswell that ultimately became Silicon Slopes."

The documentary chronicles the company's unlikely beginnings, meteoric rise to global dominance and eventual clash with Microsoft. But what began as a film about software quickly became something much larger.

It became a story about timing, innovation, and a handful of Utahns who changed the world.

The company no one under 40 remembers

At its peak, WordPerfect wasn't just successful. It was dominant.

"WordPerfect owned approximately 70% of the global word processing market for several years," Jake Featherstone said. "For a long time, they really didn't have any competition. They were the international word processor of choice."

The company's offered sale price in 1994 would be worth roughly $3.6 billion today, and its software was used in more than 20 languages around the world.

Yet despite that influence, WordPerfect has largely faded from public memory.

"Even though it was the top-selling and most popular word processor in the world for nearly a decade, no one under forty has even heard of it," Scott Featherstone said. "They changed the world – literally."

Alan Ashton and Bruce Bastian work at WordPerfect offices in Orem sometime in the 1980s.WordPerfect Corporation

That realization became one of the driving forces behind making the documentary.

The filmmakers also knew time was running out.

WordPerfect founders Alan Ashton and Bruce Bastian were aging. And Bastian passed away after being interviewed for the film.

"With their inevitable passing, the story of WordPerfect's genesis and early years would be lost forever," Scott Featherstone said.

The Utah company that helped build Silicon Slopes

Today, Utah's tech ecosystem generates billions of dollars and employs tens of thousands of people. But many of those roots can be traced directly back to WordPerfect. At one point, the company employed more than 5,000 people. Many were programmers, engineers, and developers who would eventually launch businesses of their own.

"If you look at the list of major Utah tech startups, a large majority of them started as employees and managers at WordPerfect," Jake Featherstone said. "WordPerfect's success provided huge momentum for the next generation of tech innovators."

The founders also repeatedly pointed to Utah's talent pool as a major factor in the company's success.

"They would cherry-pick the best and brightest from the local universities and especially from BYU," Jake Featherstone said.

The documentary also highlights something many Utahns may not realize: the state was involved in the computer revolution far earlier than most people think.

"The University of Utah was one of the first universities to have a computer science department and the first university outside California to connect to Arpanet, the precursor to the internet," Scott Featherstone said.

In other words, Utah wasn't late to the tech party. It helped set the table.

One of the documentary's most unusual creative decisions is the absence of a narrator. There are no celebrity voiceovers. No omniscient guides explaining what happened. Instead, the story is told entirely by the people who built WordPerfect.

"We wanted the story to be told by those who had boots on the ground, who were right in the middle of it," Scott Featherstone said. "As filmmakers, we didn't want to bias or color the story in any way."

That decision created a massive editing challenge.

The filmmakers conducted roughly 40 hours of interviews and spent more than a year hunting down archival footage from an era before digital video existed.

"It requires much more editing to keep the story compelling because you're not employing professional talent to do that for you," Scott Featherstone said.

The result feels less like a traditional business documentary and more like sitting across the table from the people who lived through one of Utah's most important business stories.

The battle that changed everything

As the filmmakers dug deeper into WordPerfect's history, one storyline kept resurfacing.

Microsoft.

What started as friendly competition eventually became something much more personal.

"It was intriguing to discover the very personal and escalating conflict between WordPerfect and Bill Gates and Microsoft," Scott Featherstone said.

That conflict ultimately became one of the documentary's central narrative engines.

"We found that two real stories began to emerge," Scott Featherstone said. "The emergence of Bill Gates and Microsoft as their primary competition and eventual nemesis due to Microsoft owning the operating system."

For audiences who love underdog stories, the battle between a Utah startup and one of the most powerful technology companies in history provides plenty of drama.

More than a software story

The most surprising revelation in the film may have nothing to do with technology at all.

According to the filmmakers, Ashton and Bastian once walked away from a significantly larger sale price because they believed a lower offer would be better for their employees and for Utah.

The moment became one of the documentary's emotional centerpieces.

"When we discovered the fact that Bruce and Alan walked away from a significantly higher selling price in order to keep the company local and their people employed, we knew that needed to be the climax of the third act," Scott Featherstone said.

That decision speaks to what the Featherstones believe the film is ultimately about.

It's a story about software. It's a story about innovation. But more than anything, it's a story about people who built something extraordinary.

"We hope people come away from this believing anything's possible," Scott Featherstone said. "We hope they paint their painting, compose their song, write that book, or develop that program."

For Utahns, it may also serve as a reminder that one of the state's most important success stories didn't begin in Silicon Valley. It began right here at home.

What's next for the film?

The documentary is complete, but its journey is just beginning.

The Featherstones are currently seeking distribution and festival opportunities, hoping to bring the WordPerfect story to a wider audience.

So far, the film has already generated interest on the festival circuit, earning selections from the New York Film Awards, the New York International Film Festival and the Branson Film Festival.

"We know there is interest in the WordPerfect story," Scott Featherstone said.

For now, there isn't a public release date or streaming home to announce. But given the response the filmmakers have already received, they're optimistic that audiences will eventually get the chance to discover a story that helped shape not only Utah's economy, but much of the modern technology landscape.

And perhaps that's fitting.

WordPerfect spent years quietly powering offices, businesses and homes around the world. Decades later, the story behind that success is finally getting its moment in the spotlight.

Photos

Alan Ashton and Bruce Bastian, who founded WordPerfect Corporation, in an undated photo in 1984.WordPerfect Corporation

Bruce Bastian plays the saxophone and Alan Ashton on the trumpet in an undated photo. The two co-founded WordPerfect Corporation in 1978.WordPerfect Corporation

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.