“The Apprentice,” a film dramatizing Donald Trump’s rise through New York City real estate and his relationship with political power broker Roy Cohn, will hit theaters in October in the final stretch of the presidential election, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.
Briarcliff Entertainment, an independent distributor, plans to release the movie on Oct. 11, the source said. Sebastian Stan stars as Trump and Jeremy Strong of “Succession” fame plays Cohn, one of the former president’s mentors.
“The Apprentice” premiered in May at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it immediately turned into a sociopolitical lightning rod. In a statement at the time, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blasted the movie as “pure malicious defamation.”
“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Cheung said. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.” (It’s unclear whether the campaign has filed suit.)
In response to a request for comment Friday, Cheung sent NBC News a similarly worded statement excoriating the movie.
The film drew controversy partly because it features a dramatized scene of an alleged incident in which Trump sexually assaulted his first wife, Ivana, who is played by Maria Bakalova from “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”
Ivana Trump, in her 1990 divorce deposition, alleged Donald Trump raped her. He denied the allegation, and she later said she was not speaking literally but, rather, felt she had been violated by her ex-husband. She died in 2022.
“The Apprentice” was directed by Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by Vanity Fair journalist Gabriel Sherman, who has covered Trump and his political allies for more than a decade. Cohn died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, though he denied he was HIV-positive. He was 59.
Abbasi’s representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Trump campaign’s statement.
When asked by reporters at Cannes about the Trump team’s threat of a lawsuit, Abbasi suggested the former president should see the film.
“I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike,” Abbasi said. “I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know?”
“I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening and have a chat afterwards, if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign,” the director added.
Briarcliff Entertainment has experience releasing controversial projects. The company distributed “The Dissident,” a 2020 documentary about the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after other studios balked.
The company also provided distribution for “Fahrenheit 11/9,” a 2018 documentary by the progressive filmmaker Michael Moore that chronicles the 2016 presidential election and the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
The news that “The Apprentice” had secured a distribution deal was first reported by Puck.
Jake Traylor and Gabe Gutierrez contributed.
