Here is one October surprise you can put on your calendar now: The Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” which set tongues wagging when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, has secured theatrical distribution by Briarcliff Entertainment and will hit theaters on Oct. 11, less than a month before the presidential election.
Ahead of its U.S. release, “The Apprentice,” which stars Sebastian Stan as the real estate tycoon turned reality TV star and politician alongside Jeremy Strong as his notorious attorney and mentor Roy Cohn, also has been rumored to be among the surprise additions to the lineup at the Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off Friday, allowing North American audiences their first look at the film.
Directed by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi (“Holy Spider”), “The Apprentice,” which charts Trump’s ruthless rise to prominence in the New York of the 1970s and ’80s, bowed in competition at Cannes and immediately stoked controversy. The film, which The Times called “hypnotically trashy,” offers a decidedly unflattering depiction of Trump as a sleazy, cruel social climber who turns his back on his alcoholic brother, rapes his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), on the floor of their New York penthouse and undergoes liposuction and cosmetic surgery for hair loss.
After the film’s unveiling, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung blasted it as “garbage” and “pure fiction” and vowed to file a lawsuit against the filmmakers in an effort to derail its release. “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not 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,” Cheung said in a statement.
At a news conference at Cannes, Abbasi defended his film, saying, “It’s time to make movies political again.” He brushed aside Trump’s threats to block the film. “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” Abbasi said. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.”
Following its Cannes debut, “The Apprentice” secured distribution in Canada, Europe and parts of Asia but the film faced uncertainty in the U.S., as nervous studios, streamers and indie distributors hesitated to invite the wrath of Trump and his supporters. After months of negotiations, though, Briarcliff stepped up and grabbed the film’s domestic distribution rights.
Telluride traditionally holds back a handful of titles from its lineup announcement each year to add later as surprise screenings, and “The Apprentice” would bring further firepower to a program already heavy on hot-button political issues. This year’s festival is set to draw political luminaries including Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, who will be in attendance to support the abortion rights documentary “Zurawski v Texas,” and Democratic strategist James Carville, the subject of the new doc “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid!”
