by With the US election fast approaching, the most talked about film of the year is gone. The much-talked-about biopic of young Donald Trump, The Apprentice, made just $1.6 million on its opening weekend in the US, in 10th place and finishing below such pictures as Terrifier 3, Joker: Folie à Deux and, perhaps what a shame, the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 30-year-old film that most viewers could watch via a streaming service if they wanted to.
While Ali Abbasi’s film wasn’t made on a big budget – catering to star Sebastian Stan’s next big picture, the Marvel epic Thunderbolts – would likely cost $16 million, it’s likely to end its theatrical run as a resounding flop. It certainly won’t make any material difference to the election.
It was a completely different story when the film was screened at Cannes earlier this year. Then, Trump hoped to face Biden at the ballot box last November, and the current President was widely regarded as a very flawed opponent whose rumored initial dementia would have made it relatively easy. to overcome. But the circumstances under which the film premiered were an example of a bait-and-switch that was well-respected by the subject.
It was financed by Dan Snyder, an American billionaire businessman who raised the cost of The Apprentice, wrongly believing that it would be a magnificent portrait of his friend. When he saw the finished picture, Snyder threw on the hissy fit to end all hissy fits, making sure legal letters flew in every direction bearing the words “stop and desist”. There were even rumors that the film, which received mostly critical reviews when it was released, would be canned altogether. Political films are always a hard sell in any market, but when they become so laden with controversy, they are toxic.
The picture ended up in Hollywood when Briarcliff Entertainment, run by businessman Tom Ortenberg, stepped in to buy the distribution rights. He cut it fine, only being able to buy the rights at the end of August, before it was released on 11 October. The time constraints made it difficult to invest in an advertising campaign that would draw curious moviegoers into theaters.
When interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter regarding the circumstances behind his acquisition, Ortenberg said: “I heard about the cease and desist letter from the Trump campaign. I read about the thundering reception the film received at Cannes from critics and audiences. I assumed it would be too expensive for me to get it. Then, in a few days after its world premiere, I began to read stories about how not only major studios but also some of the independent elites were running away from the picture, not related to finance or artistic merit but strictly . based on confusion.”
This was fighting talk as far as Ortenberg was concerned. After seeing and approving the picture, he made a distribution offer, but could not, in his words, “really make a deal for domestic distribution” until negotiations between filmmakers and financed. In other words, Snyder was torn between wanting to see the film released at all, and, the businessman incarnate, wanting at least some of his money back. So, after much negotiation, Briarcliff was allowed to release the film.
Ortenberg had no illusions that it would be an instant box office hit. “We look at this as a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “It’s not about opening weekend, and it’s not about how many screens or this or that. It’s about the film’s legacy, which I think will be strong through awards season and beyond.” But this is not the Seventies or the Eighties, where an independent political drama like this could be successful orally. In the new age of cinema, if you fail on opening weekend, you’re dead in the water, especially as exhibitors will turn their screens to other, more profitable pictures.
Ortenberg – who has also acquired the rights to another controversial project, Jonathan Majors’ Magazine Dreams – was in a rage against his fellow distributors, none of whom were interested in releasing The Apprentice. “They are buns,” he said. “Many in the industry are afraid of consequences if Trump wins the election. And to me, that’s heartbreaking. I always like to think that we as an industry are better than that, and I remember that we’re not always.”
He may be a partisan Democrat, and his intention with the film may be to throw a hand grenade into the febrile political mix that is currently sweeping America. But if Ortenberg had taken a step back, he might have considered whether The Apprentice – its rave reviews aside – is the picture anyone needs or wants to watch right now.
The film’s script, written by Gabriel Sherman, was considered one of the hottest properties in Hollywood when he wrote it in 2018, halfway through Trump’s first term. It was offered to many of the great directors working today, including Clint Eastwood and Paul Thomas Anderson, both of whom have a form with small political dramas. But they both rejected it. “The producers of The Apprentice had trouble finding the right director to put his career in jeopardy,” Abassi later said. “They had to consider the business risk.”
One problem was that there was an internal debate about whether the film was a partisan attack on Trump, or an apolitical account of the early years of a controversial but important figure. At Cannes, Abassi – perhaps with tongue in cheek – called the film “completely non-partisan… I don’t think this is a film he doesn’t like,” he said of Trump’s reaction. “I don’t think he would like it, but I think he would be surprised.”
Interestingly, the film drew criticism from both the Left and the Right. Shirley Li wrote in The Atlantic that it was “a muddy exercise in Trumpology that will never answer the biggest question it raises: What does beginning to chronicle Trump reveal about one of the most documented and least mysterious men in recent American history?” ” It is also being told that the film is as much about Trump’s mentor, the character Roy Cohn, as it was about the great Jeremy Strong, and about Trump; Cohn, who was immortalized in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, was a closeted lawyer who became his political guardian before he died of AIDS in 1986, lying to the last person about the nature of his illness.
Strong has never been one to shy away from coming forward with his views when interviewed. “This is a Frankenstein movie,” he said recently. “They told us not to frame it like that, but let’s be honest. Cohn’s pernicious legacy is one of denial and that is what he has passed on to Trump: the devastation of the world and the need to punish and act with hatred.” This is hardly the non-partisan view expressed by Abassi.
Strong continued: “Part of the mess we’re in is demonizing the other side so it would be really irresponsible to make a movie about Trump that disparages him. It’s not bad to get insight and empathy.” But it’s hard not to feel that the finished product is a highly performed but fundamentally biased account of how he thinks the bad guy got worse, rather than a more interesting and nuanced account of what a man has become New York businessman into one of the most talked about political figures in American history. (UK posters for the film trumpet the GQ review calling it “A supervillain origin story” – so much for balance.)
And this is, more or less, the undoing of the film. Donald Trump is a familiar figure to every voter in the United States, partly because he is already President – for better or worse, his record is still hotly debated – and partly because he has a rare gift for self-publicity he has. his opponent was unable to imitate. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he has a gift for stand-up comedy for the time and impact that Stan, for all his acting success, can’t come close to embodying on screen.
The Apprentice may have come out at the right time in terms of timeliness, but it was also released at a time when Trump is on TV and in the newspapers almost non-stop every day. If the kind of audience that turned into millions for, say, Oppenheimer wanted to pay their money to be entertained and distracted for a few hours, they’d probably choose something to do with escapism. or with a different political history. a more distant period, rather than walking into something so trivial in current affairs.
Strong’s motivation for taking part in the film was simple, and admirable. He said that “the world is on fire, so I want to hold the mirror up to it. In this age of increased noise, AI and a digital world, art with radical honesty is needed more than ever. I want to be a part of that.” Ortenberg, likewise, should be commended for putting his money where his principles are.
It’s possible that, whatever the outcome of the 2024 election, The Apprentice will finally be seen on its own terms as a brilliant and intelligent character study of two great, deeply flawed men. But its theatrical failure is likely to lead to fewer pictures of this type being made. It might have been more successful as an HBO miniseries, or a one-and-done Netflix series, and it might have been more artistically interesting if it had involved actors and filmmakers whose politics were more ambiguous than the Card-carrying Democrats. “‘You’re making a mistake, you’re alienating half the country,'” Stan says he was told when he signed on to make the film. But nevertheless he considered the role to be a significant challenge, and a challenge he rose to.
Still, the ultimate question remains whether liberal Hollywood – with all its predictable political views – could make a truly representative biopic of Donald Trump, or whether he will always be their bogeyman. The Apprentice may stick in the previous direction, but in the end he doesn’t dare to go completely off track.
Abassi might look fondly on the recent Ronald Reagan biopic, starring Trump voters Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight, which has overcome predictably hostile reviews to gross nearly $30 million at the box office so far: an unlikely sum that his film will be developed. As the upcoming election may or may not prove, sometimes people are sick of being told they’re wrong and ignorant, and they’ll vote with their money – or their ballot – in ways that the liberal elite wouldn’t. their comfort.
