The Trump biopic coming out at the right time in the United States

Less than a month before the American presidential election, “The Apprentice”, an explosive biopic on the beginnings in business of Republican candidate Donald Trump, is counting on the polarization of the United States to attract crowds to French-speaking cinemas, from October 16, 2024.

Focused on the years 1970-1980, the film, released Friday October 11, in cinemas in the United States, attracted threats from Donald Trump’s lawyers, in particular for a scene which depicts him raping his ex-wife .

None of the major Hollywood studios wanted to take the risk of distributing the film, which was released under the label of an independent distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment, in some 1,700 cinemas in North America.

At the New York premiere last week, executive producer James Shani said the film had been “particularly difficult” to release. “It says a lot about the times we’re in.”

“I think it’s interesting that people find this film controversial,” said its director, Danish-Iranian Ali Abbasi.

“Think about it… we’re talking about someone who really was convicted of sexual assault,” he added, alongside actors Sebastian Stan (“Captain America”) and Jeremy Strong (“Succession”). Mr. Trump appealed this civil conviction.

One of the most controversial scenes shows Donald Trump raping his first wife Ivana, after she belittled him by accusing him of becoming fatter and balder. In reality, Ivana, who died in 2022, had accused her husband of rape during the divorce proceedings, before withdrawing these accusations.

Controversy can attract attention, says media scholar Paul Dergarabedian. “But how that translates into wanting to go see the movie is a whole different thing,” adds this analyst for Comscore.

“The Apprentice”, a title inspired by a TV show he presented, will not be first at the box office the first weekend, he predicts. But it should benefit from context, just like the recent biopic “Reagan.”

Despite the headlines, “The Apprentice” offers a relatively nuanced view of the early days of Donald Trump, whom the film initially presents as a somewhat naive careerist, trying to find his place in the cutthroat world of real estate and New York politics, before gradually abandoning his principles in contact with business.

“I really don’t think that the film figuratively assassinates the character of Donald Trump,” the director of the film, presented at Cannes last May, told AFP. During a press conference, he also invited the former president to see the film before judging it.

The film, which chronicles Trump’s real estate career, struggled to attract audiences, grossing only about $1.58 million despite a production budget of $16 million and a release in 1,750 theaters in the states -United States, Friday October 11, 2024. Despite this disappointment, the film, with Sebastian Stan in the role of Trump and Jeremy Strong in that of Republican agent Roy Cohn, received mostly positive reviews. The Los Angeles Times said that Sebastian Stan delivers “the performance of his career to date” and also praised the film’s cinematography for capturing the 1980s setting well.