“The Apprentice,” a film dramatizing Donald Trump’s early career, is set to be released less than a month before the US presidential election.
The movie, in which Sebastian Stan portrays a young Trump, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. It has secured theatrical distribution by Briarcliff Entertainment and will hit theaters in the US on October 11, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The title of the film is partly about the TV series that Trump fronted for more than 10 years beginning in 2004. But the movie is set several decades earlier, as Trump is making a name for himself as a real estate developer.
The film directed by Ali Abbasi is said to feature scenes of “rape, erectile dysfunction, baldness and betrayal.” The film stirred controversy with a scene that allegedly depicts Donald Trump raping his late ex-wife, Ivana Trump.
The couple, who married in 1977, divorced in 1992, and Ivana passed away in July 2022. Back in 1989, Ivana claimed Trump had sexually assaulted her during their divorce, but she later backtracked on that accusation more than 25 years after it happened. In a statement in July 2015, right after Trump kicked off his first run for president, Ivana said, “The whole thing is completely false.”
Donald Trump says “The Apprentice” is election interference
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the Associated Press on August 30 that the film’s release amounted to “election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.”
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day, and 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, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” he said.
A cease-and-desist letter was also sent to the filmmakers by Trump’s legal team in May, calling it “direct foreign interference in America’s elections.”
“If you do not immediately cease and desist all distribution and marketing of this libelous farce, we will be forced to pursue all appropriate legal remedies,” lawyer David Warrington wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Business Insider at the time.
The movie, which came out in May, got a mix of opinions. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw didn’t like it, calling it “too complicated and not worth it.” On the other hand, Variety’s Owen Gleiberman thought it was “tough and biting.”
Meanwhile, The Times of London even argued that it would “make you feel sympathy for Trump,” as the biography depicts him climbing the ladder in New York high society in the late 1970’s and 80’s.
