Hollywood Reporter – The actors play Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, respectively, in Ali Abbasi’s film, which had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday night.

The Apprentice, the Donald Trump origin story that everyone in the film community and beyond has been talking and speculating about, had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival’s Galaxy Theatre on Saturday night. The stateside unveiling comes three months after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and just days after Briarcliff Entertainment acquired its U.S. distribution rights amid legal threats from the Trump campaign, with plans to release it in theaters on Oct. 11, less than a month before the presidential election.
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Interest in the film among those who missed it on the Croisette has been through the roof, to the extent that Telluride’s 10 p.m. Saturday night screening — which was added to the fest’s schedule only a few hours before it took place — attracted a full house of 500 people, with many others turned away. Post-screening reactions were, not unexpectedly, divided. But my own impression from finally seeing the film (I had to return from Cannes before it screened there), and the degree to which the people who like it really like it, is that it should not be counted out of the awards race — particularly its lead actor Sebastian Stan, who plays young Trump, and its supporting actor Jeremy Strong, who plays the man who became his consigliere, Roy Cohn.

The Apprentice was written by Vanity Fair’s longtime Trump chronicler Gabriel Sherman and directed by Border and Holy Spider helmer Ali Abbasi, in his English-language film debut. It covers the period from 1973, when New York businessman Trump, then 27, first crossed paths with power lawyer Cohn, through 1986, shortly after Cohn died (under circumstances that you should not Google if you don’t already know them), and shortly before the publication of The Art of the Deal, the book that helped to elevate Trump from a braggadocious businessman to a full-fledged celebrity.

Trump supporters have assumed that the film would be a Hollywood hit job. That’s partly because most of them have heard only about a brief scene in which Trump is shown forcing himself on his first wife, Ivanka (Borat Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova), which, in fact, is based on an accusation that Ivanka herself made and then, perhaps under pressure, recanted. But the truth is that The Apprentice — which opens with a disclaimer that a few aspects of its story are imagined, but the vast majority of it is documented — is not some mocking caricature of Trump; it’s actually a portrayal that some Trump haters will find too sympathetic.

It is neither a puff piece nor a hit job, but is, as the Iranian-born Dane Abbasi said during his pre-screening introduction, an outsider-to-America’s effort to hold up a “mirror” to our society and force us to look at it anew. It shows the man who would become president as a young, handsome, charming and promising businessman, as well as someone who was emotionally damaged by his father, steered down a dark path by Cohn, and, consequently, became vain, selfish and occasionally very cruel.

Stan nails Trump’s look, mannerisms and unusual way of speaking — which must have been a daunting assignment, given how many other people have done impersonations of Trump — and Strong captures the dead-eyed look and coiled-snake physicality that Cohn possessed going back to his early years as Joseph McCarthy’s henchman.

One doesn’t have to like a character — or even a film — to appreciate an actor’s guts and abilities. Indeed, in recent years the Academy’s actors branch has nominated numerous impressive portrayals of polarizing people in polarizing movies — among them Megyn Kelly, Richard Nixon, Tammy Faye Bakker, George W. Bush, Lynne Cheney and Dick Cheney, and J.D. Vance’s grandma, none of whom are particular favorites of the Hollywood community.

The Apprentice’s distributor, Briarcliff, is relatively new to the scene, but its chief, Tom Ortenberg, is not new to the awards game, having overseen, during his days at Lionsgate, the campaign for Crash, and during his days at Open Road, the campaign for Spotlight — both of which went on to win the best picture Oscar. He has also already retained a number of highly capable awards consultants to help execute a push for The Apprentice. And the talent behind the film is on the ground at Telluride supporting it. So, much like it would be unwise to count out Trump in 2024, I believe that it would be unwise to count out The Apprentice.

Deadline

As Deadline told you would happen, tonight at 10 PM is a lock for the US debut of the hot button film The Apprentice, about the formative growth of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as mentored by Roy Cohn. The film has been quietly placed on the Telluride roster, and now they’ve locked the Galaxy Theater.

This comes after months of turmoil that followed the film’s Cannes premiere. Scripted by Gabriel Sherman, the film stars Sebastian Stan as young Donald Trump in the ’70s as he — according to the description furnished by Telluride — “falls under the sway of the demonic lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). In following Trump as he learns the ways of celebrity and power in the New York of the ’70s, director Ali Abbasi (Border, The Holy Spider) evokes the gritty documentary style of directors like Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin. And he keeps us riveted to the surprisingly poignant father-and-son dynamic, beautifully enacted by Stan and Strong, that seems fortified by greed, insecurity and endless need.” Maria Bakalova plays Trump’s wife Ivana Trump, and one of the scenes the Trump camp has complained about is a scene showing Trump raping his estranged wife.

There are several buzz films on the schedule tonight, including Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night about the chaos that went into the premiere of the NBC staple Saturday Night Live. But buckle up for The Apprentice. Abbas, Stan, Strong, Amy Baer and Sherman will be there. The film gets released before the elections by Briarcliff, likely on October 11 with international rollout to follow.

Vulture

Talk about campaign season. The Trump movie will make it to U.S. theaters before the presidential election … and in time to push for awards consideration. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Briarcliff Entertainment will theatrically release Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice on October 11, after the movie first plays at some fall film festivals. A “full-on” awards campaign is said to be planned to promote the biopic, which stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump opposite Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn. For a while, The Apprentice seemed like a potential tough sell, perhaps because Trump’s team threatened to file a lawsuit over it. The movie reportedly includes a scene where Trump rapes his wife Ivana, which he has denied doing (Ivana made the claim in a 1990 divorce deposition, but later said she had felt “violated” and hadn’t meant the word “rape” literally). Billionaire Dan Snyder, who helped fund the film through his production company Kinematics, allegedly also wanted to block its theatrical release after the Cannes Film Festival premiere made him realize that the former president wasn’t portrayed as positively as he expected. A source told Vulture that The Apprentice executive producer James Shani, whose company Rich Spirit is among the film’s backers, acquired the film from Kinematics and partnered with Briarcliff.

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung claimed in a Friday statement to the Associated Press that the film’s upcoming October release is akin to “election interference by Hollywood elites right before November.” Cheung described The Apprentice as “pure malicious defamation” that “doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store” and instead “belongs in a dumpster fire.” Granted, sometimes that’s exactly the kind of movie that the internet latches onto, but we’ll see.

The Wrap – ‘The Apprentice’ Producer James Shani to Lead Group That Buys Out Pro-Trump Investor’s Stake | Exclusive

James Shani, who is an executive producer on the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” that debuted at Cannes earlier this year, is leading the group that will buy out Dan Snyder’s stake in the controversial film directed by Ali Abbasi, TheWrap has exclusively learned. The move will pave the way for the film to secure U.S. distribution after Snyder, a staunch conservative, wanted out of the movie.

According to insiders, the producers and Snyder are working to settle in the $6 million-$7 million range, and if there is no agreement this week, the film’s producers are confident in their own legal recourse to give the film a path towards release.

The $7 million is coming from existing individual investors including Shani and Scythia Productions. Upon settlement, the producers will enter into a distribution agreement with Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment targeting a wide release before the election.

Negotiations to buy out Snyder’s stake have been ongoing since Cannes. The buyout gives Ali Abbasi creative control of the film.

The film, starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, had languished without a U.S. distribution deal since debuting in May at the Cannes Film Festival to strong reviews. Snyder wanted out of the film — he was not among those who read the script and did not know how the project would portray Trump. The film features a much-discussed recreation sequence where Trump rapes his former wife Ivana (she later recanted the allegation). Snyder donated more than $1 million to Trump and his inaugural committee in 2016 and $100,000 to his 2020 reelection campaign.

CAA and WME jointly represent US sales and are in a rare moment of collaboration brokering the settlement.

Reps for the filmmakers did not immediately respond to The Wrap’s request for comment.

Shani previously came on board to produce the project which needed additional financing to finish principal photography.

“The Apprentice” was written by Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi. It takes a look into the the life and career of Trump (Stan) while working as a New York real estate during the 1970s and the ’80s. He was supported at the time by lawyer Roy Cohn (Strong). The cast also includes Maria Bakalova as Ivana and Martin Donovan as Trump’s father, Fred Trump.

Briarcliff Entertainment is run by Tom Ortenberg, who oversaw “The Dissident,” about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, another film that Hollywood was afraid to distribute. Ortenberg also distributed “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Spotlight,” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and “Nightcrawler.” The company is eyeing a wide theatrical release in the fall before the presidential election in November and is currently discussing dates.