A lawsuit is rarely a reason to celebrate, but the team behind the biopic The Apprentice could hardly have wished for more effective advertising. The independent film was produced without a major studio behind it and can use every stage, including a place in the competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. Now Former US President Donald Trump wants to prevent publication. And that’s not the most bizarre twist on the most controversial film in this year’s festival program to date.
Marvel star Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump
Set in the ’70s and ’80s, The Apprentice follows Donald Trump’s rise as a businessman. Initially, Trump (Winter Soldier actor Sebastian Stan) stands in his father’s shadow. A meeting with colorful lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong from Succession) changes everything.
Cohn teaches Trump how to bend the truthto achieve his goals. And how to clean out New York City’s coffers using blackmail and the like. Trump perfects the Cohn method until the student surpasses his mentor.
In the script by Gabriel Sherman (The Loudest Voice), Trump is portrayed in a multifaceted way, but it is an obviously critical portrait. It shows Trump raping his then-wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) and doing business with gang boss Anthony Salerno. Liposuction and hair loss surgery are among the unflattering scenes in the biopic. It is all the more surprising that anyone could assume in advance that that The Apprentice could be a positive Trump biopic. That’s exactly what allegedly happened.
Why a billionaire Trump fan is involved in the film
The most bizarre twist surrounding The Apprentice came to light before its world premiere. “Trump friend” and billionaire Daniel Snyder is said to have put money into the film “because he felt it would be a flattering portrayal of the 45th president”as Variety exclusively reported.
DCM
Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice
According to the industry magazine, Snyder has donated over a million dollars to Trump organizations and is involved in The Apprentice with his company Kinematics. After seeing the film, Snyder is said to have pushed to prevent The Apprentice from being released.
Trump campaign threatens to sue The Apprentice
Snyder’s objections did not stop there. After the world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last Monday, the Trump re-election campaign spoke out. In a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter ) it says:
We will file a lawsuitto counter the blatantly false claims of these alleged filmmakers […] This garbage is pure fiction, exaggerating lies that have long since been debunked.
The threat continues:
This ‘film’ is pure malicious slander, shouldn’t see the light of day and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a soon-to-be-closing bargain store, it belongs in a dumpster. This is how the director of the Trump biopic reacts
The Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, who was most recently represented in Cannes with the serial killer film Holy Spider, was not intimidated by the threatening gestures. At the press conference for the film, he said about the possible Trump lawsuit:
Everyone talks about how he sued a lot of people – but they don’t talk about his success rateDo you understand?
At the premiere the night before, Abbasi was even more explicit about his creative ambitions with The Apprentice and the portrayal of Trump’s methods:
There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism. There is only the dirty way. There is only the banal way. There is only way to deal with this wave on its own terms and at its own level, and that won’t be pretty.
It remains to be seen whether Trump or Snyder can use legal means to prevent the release of The Apprentice. The film has now been given the biggest possible stage outside of the Oscars.
The Apprentice has not yet been released in German cinemas, but at least it already has a distributor with DCM.