EXCLUSIVE: The Donald Trump–Roy Cohn film The Apprentice might be late out of the gate because of all the backroom controversies and legal threats by the Republican presidential nominee. Led by Tom Ortenberg’s distribution outlet Briarcliff Entertainment, they’re making up for lost time.
After a rousing couple of screenings in Telluride, the film will make its next appearance at the Toronto Film Festival tomorrow night. The Ali Abbass-directed drama will be brought north of the border by Briarcliff for a private, invitation only screening for press and tastemakers who didn’t catch the film at Telluride, where it was a last-minute addition. Or Cannes, where the film made its World Premiere in May.
The post-Cannes road has been rocky, for reasons that have been well discussed. The TIFF screening will be held tomorrow night at the Bell Lightbox at 7 p.m. with no red carpet or cast paraded for photo ops. There will be plenty more as Deadline can reveal that the film will be released on 2,000+ screens on October 11, and submitted for all awards.
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They’ll be going for broke on this hot button film now that the buyout of the Daniel Snyder-bankrolled Kinematics has been completed with exec producer James Shani’s Rich Spirit acquiring his position. Deadline revealed that Snyder, a Trump supporter and pal who objected to several of the scenes depicted in the film, got a $2 million premium on top of the $5 million he invested in the film.
Abbassi said in Telluride that the film is not a hit piece. Indeed it’s way more than that, with Abbassi using the Gabriel Sherman script to bring to live ’70s Manhattan in an equal mix of decadence and squalor. That’s the backdrop for the coming of age story of Trump (Sebastian Stan) and the formative lessons and mentoring he received from the reptilian lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). There is connective tissue between those lessons and signature Trump qualities we see every day. That include his baseless denial of the presidential election results and whipping a MAGA crowd into a frenzy before they stormed the Capital on January 6 as Joe Biden’s election was being validated. It also explains much about Trump’s penchant for insults, disrespectful treatment of women, and his unwillingness to ever admit wrongdoing.
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Is there enough time to create pre-release buzz on The Apprentice? History says yes. The six week run-up matches the time that Ortenberg had when he led the release of Michael Moore’s politically charged Fahrenheit 9/11 after Miramax was forced to drop out by its parent company Disney. Also a thorn in the side to Republicans, that film became the highest grossing documentary film in history.
They’ve just released a clip:
