Though Donald Trump was the one who hosted “The Apprentice,” Ali Abbasi’s new film turns him into the apprentice.
After Trump hosted the reality series of the same name, director Abbasi is putting his own twist on the title for a buzzy festival feature biopic starring Sebastian Stan as the controversial businessman turned infamous U.S. president.
In the first trailer for the film, we see Trump taking a “Faustian deal” with right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) starting in the late ’70s and early ’80s, grooming him into the politician he would become today. According to the synopsis, “Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé — someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.” Trump’s marriage to Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova) and relationship with his family including Fred Trump Sr. (Martin Donovan) are also fictionalized onscreen.
The film is written by first-time feature screenwriter Gabriel Sherman.
“The Apprentice” debuted at Cannes and later screened at Telluride and TIFF. Director Abbasi’s “Border” previously won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2018, while “Holy Spider” competed for the Palme d’Or at the festival in 2022.
IndieWire critic David Ehrlich wrote in the review out of Cannes that “The Apprentice” begins with Trump depicted as an “insecure Manhattan nepo baby who fumbles around the city in search of his slumlord father’s non-existent affection.” Ehrlich compared the film to having “‘Godfather’-like dimensions with a fittingly vain and sociopathic riff on one of that masterpiece’s signature moments, as “Abbasi intercuts Cohn’s funeral with footage of Trump going under the knife for a liposuction.”
“‘The Apprentice’ doesn’t do anything to suggest that the most notorious prosecutor in American history wasn’t a self-loathing ghoul whose lust to dominate a world that didn’t love him made his country a worse place for everyone who’s had to live in it since, it simply makes the case that the protegé he molded in his own image — only taller, richer, and straighter — was somehow even worse,” the review reads. “Cohn may have hated himself, but Trump doesn’t care about anybody.”
The feature is produced by Daniel Bekerman for Scythia Films (Canada), Jacob Jarek for Profile Pictures (Denmark), Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde for Tailored Films (Ireland), and director Abbasi and Louis Tisne for Film Institute (Denmark). Executive producers are Amy Baer, Mark H. Rapaport, Emanuel Nunez, Josh Marks, Grant S. Johnson, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Thorsten Schumacher, Niamh Fagan, Gabe Sherman, Lee Broda, Greg Denny, and James Shani.
The producers announced a Kickstarter campaign to cover marketing and some legal fees from Trump’s team, which is trying to block the movie’s release. The movie also faced some difficulties finding an international distributor after one of the movie’s financiers, the Dan Snyder-backed Kinematics, was unhappy with Trump’s portrayal in the film.
Briarcliff Entertainment and executive producer Shani ultimately bought out Kinematics stake and is now distributing the film, which will debut before the 2024 election amid Trump’s bid for a second term.
“The Apprentice” premieres October 11 in theaters. Check out the trailer below.
