Donald Trump’s controversial biopic, which depicts the former president raping his wife and has led to legal threats from his lawyers, will hit US theaters this October, it was reported Friday.
Small indie studio Briarcliff Entertainment plans to release “The Apprentice” to U.S. audiences less than a month before Trump faces Kamala Harris in the country’s tight presidential election, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
Representatives for Briarcliff did not immediately respond to AFP’s questions.
The explosive film about Trump’s younger years caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Its most famous scene shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana, after she belittles him for being fat and bald.
In real life, Ivana accused Trump of rape during divorce proceedings, but later withdrew the allegation. She died in 2022.
The film also shows Trump suffering from erectile dysfunction, and undergoing liposuction and hair loss surgery.
Just hours after “The Apprentice” premiered in May, Trump’s lawyers vowed to sue the producers, calling the film “trash” and a “completely malicious defamation.”
Further complicating the film’s chances of a US release is that one of its initial financial backers was pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, who was reportedly unhappy with its portrayal of Trump and tried to stop the film.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, his financial stake in the film has now been bought out. According to the Los Angeles Times, the film is set to be released in US theaters on October 11.
Sebastian Stan’s lead performance as the young New York property tycoon Trump received overwhelmingly positive reviews at Cannes.
The film’s screenplay was written by Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who covered real estate for the New York Observer and regularly spoke with Trump.
Far from being a simple plot, the film depicts Trump as an ambitious but naïve social climber desperately trying to get ahead in the cutthroat world of Manhattan property deals and politics.
The Times of London argued that it would “make you feel sympathy for Trump.”
But Trump’s decency slowly erodes as he learns the dark arts of bargaining and power from his mentor, Roy Cohn (played by “Succession” star Jeremy Strong).
Film director Ali Abbasi told AFP he included the rape scene to show how Trump had distanced himself “from the human relationships that define him and control him as a human being.”
Stein, best known for his Marvel superhero movies, said Trump’s early behavior is “more relevant than we want to admit.”
Briarcliff Entertainment was launched in late 2010. Its founder, Tom Ortenberg, previously helped run the Oscar campaigns for best picture winners “Spotlight” and “Crash.”
He is expected to promote “The Apprentice” during Hollywood’s upcoming awards season.
The news comes on the same day that former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s biopic “Reagan” is released in U.S. theaters.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
