AFP
An unflattering movie portrayal of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is set to hit movie theaters next month.
“The Apprentice” has been acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment for a pre-election U.S. release on Oct. 11 — as well as an awards push, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The film covers Trump’s early years as a young real estate developer and stars Sebastian Stan as the future president, and “Succession’s” Jeremy Strong as Trump’s onetime reptilian consigliere Roy Cohn.
Trump’s billionaire backer Dan Snyder, whose Kinematics company helped fund the film, was reportedly “furious” when he saw the finished product at Cannes in May. He had mistakenly believed it would be a flattering portrait of Trump.
Not so.
One scene that particularly upset Snyder was a rape presented in the movie of the character of Ivana Trump by her husband.
The real life Ivana Trump accused Trump of rape at their home in a 1989 divorce deposition. She later denied the claim, saying in 2015 it was “totally without merit.”
Snyder tried — and failed — to block the movie with legal threats.
Its creators have touted the film as a story about the “origins of a system … featuring larger-than-life characters … set in a world of power and ambition.”
“What Abassi’s film reveals most of all is the extent to which the toxicity that’s now an inescapable part of our contemporary reality was shaped by the unholy alliance” between Trump and Coen a “half a century ago,” David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter wrote in his review of the film after it was shown in Cannes.
The movie grabbed an astounding eight-minute standing ovation there.
The Trump campaign issued a statement after its Cannes showing saying that the movie was “garbage” and “pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have long been debunked.”
The campaign’s chief spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement to Variety called the movie “election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House.”
He said a lawsuit would be filed against the film, but that apparently hasn’t happened as of yet.
There was no immediate word from the campaign about news of the movie’s imminent release.
