The trailer for The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s controversial film about a young Donald Trump has been launched, not coincidentally one imagines, on the day of the US presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
The film had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and since then the film and filmmakers have been the focus of legal threats from the Trump campaign, in an attempt to stop it from being released in cinemas.
Despite this, The Apprentice is scheduled to be released in cinemas in Australia on 10 October and the US on 11 October.
In an interview this week with Deadline, producer Dan Bekerman said ‘… having Donald Trump’s campaign threaten us directly after our screening, not only threaten us, but threaten any distributor who dared to try to release the movie, that created a very unique circumstance for everyone involved, and we certainly have had our struggles with that. But we’ve really believed in the integrity of the movie on every level: as a work of art, as a responsible movie.’
The Apprentice is directed by Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider) and stars Sebastian Stan (Pam & Tommy) as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong (Succession) as Roy Cohn. The film charts a young Donald Trump’s ascent to power through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn and is described by the BBC as ‘a shrewd and darkly amusing tragicomedy that dramatises Donald Trump’s rise to fame and fortune in the 1970s and 80s.’
The YouTube blurb for the film states: ‘A young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), eager to make his name as a hungry second son of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today. Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé – someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.’
SBS and SBS On Demand will broadcast/ stream the ABC News US Presidential Debate on Wednesday 11 September at 11:00am AEST.
The Apprentice is released in cinemas in Australia on 10 October and the US on 11 October.
