Following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, The Apprentice – a drama allegedly based on Donald Trump’s antics – might be heading to court.
Usually, er, an absolute stranger to courtrooms and legalities, Donald Trump is currently facing an abundance of charges and legal battles that’d fill up the server space powering this website were we to list them. Still, always room for one more, and Trump’s campaign team is reportedly not very happy about the new movie The Apprentice.
It’s debuted at Cannes, and stars Sebastian Stan as Trump, with Jeremy Strong playing his ‘fixer’, Roy Cohn. Ali Abbasi has directed the movie, which Gabriel Sherman has written. Reviews have been positive, and Studiocanal just picked up the UK release rights to the movie.
In the film, there’s reportedly a nonconsensual sex scene, the taking of numerous pills, insecurity over a bald spot and things that do not paint Donald Trump in a flattering light.
Steven Cheung of the Trump campaign isn’t going to be buying a ticket for opening night by the sounds of it, telling Variety that “we will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers”.
Sticking to the usual script, his statement then blahs out into guff about “illegal Biden trials”, “election interference”, and “Hollywood elites”. Ali Abbassi is an Iranian-Danish filmmaker, but y’know.
One investor in the film, Dan Snyder, isn’t very happy either. A separate Variety report details behind the scenes issues over the edit of the film. Snyder’s company reportedly put money into the film, and Snyder too has donated to Trump’s electoral efforts in the past. What said company – Kinematics – doesn’t have is final cut of the film. As per Variety, Snyder allegedly “put money into the film via Kinematics because he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president. Snyder finally saw a cut of the film in February and was said to be furious”.
The report mentions cease and desist letters. They sound very important and expensive. The full report can be found at Variety, who have tighter legal representation than us.
At the Cannes premiere, Abbasi was delighted by the reception to his film. “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with fascism,” the director said. “It’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.”
Responding to the Trump camp’s reported discontent with the film, Abbasi added: “I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike. I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know?
“Like I’ve said before, 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.”
There’s no sign that The Apprentice is going to have its release delayed or cancelled at the moment, just that it’s bound to be used as a football somewhere along the line. Whether the Trump campaign follows through with its legal threats remains to be seen. The Orange One has thus far remained quiet on the matter. Can’t last.
