After struggling to drum up interest following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has found a distributor that plans to release the film shortly before the election in November. Briarcliff Entertainment will release “The Apprentice” on Oct. 11 in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
Quick Read
- “The Apprentice,” a film starring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has found a distributor after struggling to gain interest following its Cannes Film Festival premiere.
- Briarcliff Entertainment will release the film in U.S. and Canadian theaters on October 11, just before the November election.
- The film, directed by Ali Abbasi, focuses on Trump’s rise in New York real estate and includes a controversial scene depicting an alleged rape of Ivana Trump by Trump, based on a claim she made during their 1990 divorce proceedings.
- Larger studios were hesitant to bid on the film, partly due to potential legal threats from Trump’s campaign, which labeled the movie as “pure fiction” and considered legal action.
- Abbasi expressed interest in discussing the film’s context with Trump, stating that Trump might not actually dislike the movie.
- Briarcliff Entertainment is known for releasing films like the documentary “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” and the thriller “Memory” starring Liam Neeson.
The Associated Press has the story:
Trump film ‘The Apprentice’ finds distributor, will open before election
Newslooks- NEW YORK (AP) —
After struggling to drum up interest following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has found a distributor that plans to release the film shortly before the election in November. Briarcliff Entertainment will release “The Apprentice” on Oct. 11 in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
Director Ali Abbasi, the Danish Iranian filmmaker, had prioritized getting “The Apprentice” into theaters before voters head to the polls. After larger studios and film distributors opted not to bid on the film, Abbasi also complained in early June on X that “for some reason certain power people in your country don’t want you to see it!!!”
Part of what dampened interest in “The Apprentice” was the potential threat of legal action. After its Cannes premiere in May, Trump’s reelection campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, called the movie “pure fiction” and said the Trump team would file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”
“The Apprentice” chronicles Trump’s rise to power in New York real estate under the tutelage of defense attorney Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong). Late in the movie, Trump is depicted raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova ). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Trump raped her. Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.
Abbasi has argued Trump might not dislike the movie. “I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening and have a chat afterwards, if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign,” Abbasi said in May.
A message sent to Trump’s campaign for comment was not immediately returned. Briarcliff Entertainment has released films including the 2022 documentary “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” and the Liam Neeson thriller “Memory.” The indie distributor is run by Tom Ortenberg, who at Lionsgate helped released Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and as chief executive of Open Road backed the best-picture winner “Spotlight.”
