Hollywood Reporter – Daniel Bekerman and Amy Baer talk about the legal threats from Trump that spooked distributors and why crowdfunding was right for their film: “We wanted to do whatever we could to make sure that the movie was seen.”

* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE

Yesterday, the filmmakers behind Donald Trump movie The Apprentice launched a Kickstarter campaign to assist with the October theatrical release of the film with a goal of raising $100,000. A day later, it has already topped that goal, raising more than $139,000 for the campaign, dubbed “Release The Apprentice.”

A Kickstarter campaign is not the go-to move for a splashy, albeit independently financed, feature with award-winning stars like Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, and a debut at the Cannes Film Festival. But The Apprentice has had a long and embattled journey to get to theaters.

Since the film’s festival debut, its potential release has been mired in uncertainty. Dan Snyder, the pro-Trump billionaire, is involved with Kinematics, the company that put up equity for the film against domestic rights. Snyder was reportedly was displeased with the film’s depiction of Trump and sought to block its release. After the film’s Cannes debut, Trump’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter also in an attempt to block the film’s release.

The Apprentice, from director Ali Abbasi, explores Donald Trump’s (Stan) rise to power in 1980s America under the influence of the firebrand right-wing attorney Roy Cohn (Strong). Among the scenes that reportedly earned the ire of the former president and his backers are a sequence where he rapes his first wife Ivana and also scenes that show Trump getting liposuction.

Ahead of the film’s screening at the Telluride Film Festival, it was reported that Briarcliff Entertainment would release The Apprentice on Oct 11. And, in addition to yesterday’s Kickstarter, it was announced that Kinematics exited the project over “creative differences,” with fellow producer James Shani’s Rich Spirit buying out the company’s interest.

After a whirlwind couple of months, The Apprentice producers Daniel Bekerman and Amy Baer talked to The Hollywood Reporter about Trump’s threats, the Kickstarter campaign and their hopes for the film.
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Variety

* NOTE: If you want to donate to the kickstarter click here: RELEASE THE APPRENTICE

Filmmakers of “The Apprentice,” a dramatized origin story in which Sebastian Stan portrays a young Donald Trump, are asking for money to bolster the film’s theatrical release.

In a highly unusual move, they launched a Kickstarter called “Release the Apprentice” to “keep the film in as many theaters for as long as possible,” according to a press release. The crowdfunding campaign features tiered reward levels based on donation amounts, including a $25 donation which allows people to stream the film after it hits theaters, and a $100 donation for which donors will be able to see their name in a special section on the end credits. Higher level pledges include one of three actual toupees worn by Stan on-screen and VIP tickets to attend the film’s premiere in NYC.

“The Apprentice is first and foremost humanist, which makes it radically different from all the political noise,” said executive producer Amy Baer.

“Despite the integrity of the film and without even seeing it, Trump’s campaign sought to suppress it,” added producer Dan Bekerman. “The idea that artists can no longer freely criticize the powerful should concern us all. We need your help to resoundingly reject this dangerous precedent.”

“The Apprentice” premiered at Cannes Film Festival and landed at Briarcliff Entertainment after struggling to find a buyer. The 1970s-set film, directed by Ali Abbasi, proved controversial on the Croisette over a scene in which Trump rapes his then wife Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova. The movie centers on Trump’s relationship with Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the cutthroat attorney who helped create the man the public knows today.

Trump has criticized “The Apprentice” and the former president’s camp has threatened legal action over the movie, saying in a statement, “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”

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.