“The Apprentice” is hitting theaters on Oct. 11, 2024, but the path there was anything but easy. The film explores Donald Trump’s life in the seventies and eighties, including being mentored by the controversial lawyer Roy Cohn.
The filmmakers behind the movie are relieved to finally see it coming to theaters after struggling to find American distribution. And with the release date so soon, this Kalshi market has users betting on how well the movie will be received. It currently has a forecasted Rotten Tomatoes score of 77.8%.
'The Apprentice' stirs controversy
“The Apprentice” is controversial on multiple levels. First, it’s not surprising that a movie about the highly controversial former president has been met with lots of backlash. So much so that the filmmakers had a difficult time getting it made.
In a Vanity Fair piece, a journalist and the screenwriter of the film, Gabriel Sherman chronicled the process of making this film. In 2017, Sherman pitched the idea of a film following the “Shakespearean” relationship between Trump and Cohn. He successfully sold the pitch to Amy Baer, the owner of the small film company Gidden Media.
The idea was to showcase Trump as a three-dimensional human, as opposed to extremely good or bad. And in the Vanity Fair piece, Sherman describes wanting a non-American to direct the movie.
He hoped that an outside perspective would give a more interesting perspective on the story. They found one – Iranian Danish filmmaker, Ali Abbasi.
They also cast Sebastian Stan in the role of Trump. Stan told the Associated Press, “There wasn’t a lot of competition…It was one of those things I thought: If this isn’t going to happen, it’s not going to happen because of me. It’s not going to not happen because I’m scared.”
Stan was joined by “Succession” star and Emmy-winner Jeremy Strong as Cohn and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s” Maria Bakalova as Trump’s wife Ivana Trump.
First look at Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn in Ali Abbasi’s ‘THE APPRENTICE.’
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) April 11, 2024
Premiering at #Cannes2024. pic.twitter.com/h6nAvIA1Vr
Unfortunately, they weren’t able to find any Hollywood studio to finance the movie so they had to do so independently. They were able to pre-sell distribution rights in every territory outside of the United States along with investments from investors including Mark Rapaport.
Rapaport happens to be the son-in-law of the billionaire Dan Snyder. And Synder is a Trump donor who’s money helped finance Rapaport’s production company Kinematics.
Why would Snyder agree to this? According to Sherman’s Vanity Fair piece, Snyder probably didn’t know what the subject of the Trump movie would be.
Things seemed to be going well until they showed a rough cut of the movie to the producers. The movie features (Spoiler!) Trump’s alleged sexual assault of Ivana Trump, which she revealed in her 1990 divorce deposition. However, in 2015, Ivana disavowed the allegations.
Snyder and Rapaport didn’t want the movie screened until this scene was removed. The film premiered at Cannes anyway to an eight-minute standing ovation.
Donald Trump Movie 'The Apprentice' Shocks Cannes, Receives Nearly Eight-Minute Standing Ovation https://t.co/KmwVkJNKu1
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 20, 2024
After the premiere in May, Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter obtained by the Washington Post saying, “The Movie presents itself as a factual biography of Mr. Trump, yet nothing could be further from the truth. It is a concoction of lies that repeatedly defames President Trump and constitutes direct foreign interference in America’s elections.”
Unsurprisingly, these legal troubles only made things worse for the movie’s appeal to American companies. And in June, they finally found a distributor – Briarcliff Entertainment. However, now Rapaport refused to accept the offer.
Thankful for the filmmakers, by Aug. 31, investors Fred Benenson and James Shani were able to buy out Rapaport’s stake. The film was finally on its way to theaters.
What critics are saying
The film has premiered at both Cannes Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival, and the film was well received, especially for the performance of the two male leads. BBC says “Sebastian Stan is ‘excellent’ as a young Donald Trump” and Entertainment Weekly says “Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong bring nuance and specificity to the Trump-Cohn relationship.”
Related: How to bet on the Oscars
Becoming #TheApprentice. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong detail how the polarizing biopic charts Donald Trump’s origin story in our latest cover story. https://t.co/zBsYwvGhN8 pic.twitter.com/6EKwSa6CAF
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) October 3, 2024
So far, the Rotten Tomatoes score of the movie is 77% based on 65 reviews. And it’s not too surprising that the Kalshi market forecast is at a similar 77.8%. However, we can assume more reviews will be published once the movie is officially released in theaters, which can change the score. Importantly, the market officially resolves on Oct. 14 at 10:00 am Eastern.
With such a tumultuous path to release, the filmmakers behind this film hope that watchers come to see this movie as a humanistic interpretation of this character and not a political one. And despite recieving mostly positive reviews from critics, one might wonder if that’s enough to bring audiences (of all political leanings) to the movie theater.
