Talk about campaign season. The Trump movie will make it to U.S. theaters before the presidential election … and in time to push for awards consideration. For a while, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice seemed like a potential tough sell, perhaps because Donald Trump’s team threatened to file a lawsuit over the film. The movie reportedly includes a scene in which Trump rapes his wife Ivana, which he has denied doing (Ivana made the claim in a 1990 divorce deposition but later said she had felt “violated” and hadn’t meant the word rape literally). Despite legal concerns, possible billionaire beef, and a scathing review from Trump’s team, The Apprentice has managed to release a trailer to prove it.
What happens in The Apprentice trailer?
That’s Jeremy Strong and the sound of violins, but this isn’t Succession. As Roy Cohn, he’s the daddy now. Sebastian Stan’s Donald J. Trump puckers up to do whatever it takes to get into Cohn’s circle of illicit affairs and business deals. “Maybe I’ll run for president, I don’t know,” he tells a ’90s interviewer, just after a scene in which he stuffs his face with craft-service cheese balls. Yeah, your Trump-loving uncle is going to hate this one.
When is The Apprentice releasing?
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Briarcliff Entertainment will theatrically release The Apprentice in the U.S. on October 11, after the movie plays at some fall film festivals. A “full-on” awards campaign is said to be planned to promote the biopic, which stars Stan as a young Trump opposite Strong’s Cohn.
Was there Dan Snyder drama?
Reportedly, yup. Billionaire Dan Snyder, who helped fund The Apprentice as a backer of the production company Kinematics, allegedly wanted to block the film’s theatrical release after its Cannes Film Festival premiere made him realize the former president wasn’t portrayed as positively as he expected.
A source told Vulture that The Apprentice’s executive producer James Shani, whose company, Rich Spirit, was also among the film’s backers, acquired the film from Kinematics and partnered with Briarcliff. Kinematics later confirmed in a September 3 statement to Deadline that it had exited the project due to “creative differences” and that Rich Spirit had bought its interest in a deal with undisclosed financial terms.
Can I really purchase Sebastian Stan’s toupee on Kickstarter?
For a limited time, yes! The producers have launched a Kickstarter in hopes of crowdfunding enough money to “help get the movie out to as many theatres as possible for as long as possible.” Based on how much you donate, potential rewards include getting your name in the credits, a signed poster … and, yes, on-set hair props actually worn by Stan. As of publication time, a thousand-plus backers have already pledged more than $82,000 total. Three hairpieces — described as “Young Donnie,” “Power Donald,” and “Last Stage Don” — are still listed as available for $3,500 apiece.
What has Trump’s team said?
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung claimed in an August 30 statement to the Associated Press that The Apprentice’s upcoming October release is akin to “election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.” Cheung described the film as “pure malicious defamation” that “doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store” and instead “belongs in a dumpster fire.” Granted, sometimes that’s exactly the kind of movie the internet latches onto, but we’ll see.