Go See The Apprentice Before It’s Too Late
Trump supporters will never go see The Apprentice, and anti-Trumpers won’t be able to bear two hours watching the bane of their existence rise to wealth and power. This lack of a clear audience spells an unfortunate box-office bomb.
Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. (Briarcliff Entertainment)
The Apprentice is a better movie than I expected, with memorable performances by Sebastian Stan as a much younger Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as notoriously corrupt lawyer Roy Cohn, the mentor who did so much make Trump the shameless, smirking, bloviating, bizarrely successful presidential candidate we know today.
But I had to wonder who the audience was supposed to be for this film. Trump supporters will never see it, having been long since tipped off to stay away: “Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blasted The Apprentice as ‘pure fiction’ and ‘election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.’”
The various campaign statements that the film constitutes “pure malicious defamation” were accompanied by a cease-and-desist letter to its producers before it ever premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. That meant most top Hollywood distribution companies passed on it, and its release was uncertain until Tom Ortenberg of Briarcliff Entertainment acquired it for theatrical release with a grandiose flourish:
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