Small studio Briarcliff Entertainment plans to release "The Apprentice" to U.S. audiences less than a month before Trump faces off against Kamala Harris in the country's presidential election. Representatives for Briarcliff did not immediately respond to AFP's inquiries.
The explosive film about Trump's younger years caused shockwaves at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The most discussed scene shows Trump raping his first wife Ivana after she humiliates him for becoming fat and bald. In real life, Ivana accused Trump of raping her during divorce proceedings but later recanted the accusation. She died in 2022.
The film also shows Trump suffering from erectile dysfunction and undergoing liposuction and surgery for hair loss. Just hours after "The Apprentice" premiered in May, Trump's lawyers vowed to sue the producers, calling the film "garbage" and "pure malicious defamation." Further complicating the film's prospects for release in the US is that one of its early financial backers was pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, who was reportedly unhappy with Trump's performance and tried to block the film. He has now bought out his financial stake in the film, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The film is due to be released in U.S. theaters on October 11, the Los Angeles Times reported. Sebastian Stan's performance as young New York real estate mogul Trump received largely positive reviews at Cannes. The film's script was written by Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who covers real estate for the New York Observer and regularly talks to Trump. The film portrays Trump as an ambitious but naive social climber desperately trying to navigate the cutthroat world of real estate deals and Manhattan politics. The Times of London claims it will "make you feel sympathy for Trump." But Trump's decency is gradually eroded as he learns the dark arts of deal-making and power from his mentor Roy Cohn, played by Inheritance star Jeremy Strong.
The film's director Ali Abbasi told AFP he included the rape scene to show how Trump has distanced himself from "human relationships". Stan, best known from the Marvel superhero movies, added that Trump's early behavior "is much more believable than we want to admit." The news of Firm comes on the same day that "Reagan", another biopic about former Republican president Ronald Reagan, hits cinemas in the US. | BGNES
