After struggling to generate interest following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the film The Apprentice has found a distributor who plans to release the film shortly before the November election. The feature explores the early life of former U.S. president and presidential candidate Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan.
Briarcliff Entertainment to release The Apprentice October 11 in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi wanted to prioritize the theatrical release of his film before voters went to the polls. After major studios and film distributors chose not to bid on the film, Mr. Abbasi complained on X in early June that “for some reason, some influential people in your country don’t want you to see it!!!”
Which has partly dampened interest in The Apprentice is the threat of legal action. After its Cannes premiere in May, Trump’s re-election campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the film pure fiction and threatened to sue “to address the patently false claims made by these fake filmmakers.”
In a statement released Friday, he said the film’s release constituted “electoral interference by the Hollywood elite just before November.”
“This so-called film is pure malicious slander, it should never see the light of day and does not even deserve to be a second-rate film in the discount DVD box of a cheap movie seller about to close down, it belongs in a dumpster,” Mr Cheung said.
The Apprentice chronicles the rise of a young Donald Trump to power in New York real estate under the tutelage of defense attorney Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong). Late in the film, Mr. Trump is depicted raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she claimed that Trump had raped her. Donald Trump denied the accusation, and Ivana Trump later said that she did not mean it literally, but rather that she felt raped.
Mr Abbasi argued that Trump might not hate the film.
“I would offer to go meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the film, set up a screening and then discuss it, if anyone from the Trump campaign is interested,” he suggested in May.
Briarcliff Entertainment has released films including the 2022 political documentary Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down and the suspense of Liam Neeson Murderous Memory The independent distributor is headed by Tom Ortenberg, who helped bring Michael Moore’s film to Lionsgate Fahrenheit 9/11 and, as CEO of Open Road, supported the winner of the Best Picture award Spotlight: Special Edition.