‘Apprentice’ Filmmakers Describe Struggle to Sell Amid ‘Cowardice’ Fueled by Trump

The ‘Apprentice’ filmmakers have chronicled their struggle to find a distributor for the upcoming Donald Trump biopic since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, which the film’s eventual buyer attributed to fear.

“I can’t really speak for others, but I feel like a lot of it is cowardice toward Donald Trump,” said Tom Ortenberg, whose Briarcliff Entertainment ultimately saved the project. told Entertainment Weekly in a wide-ranging interview with the cast and crew on Friday.

“Anyone who says otherwise, I would probably accuse of lying,” Ortenberg continued.

The film follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) and his lawyer, infamous right-wing political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), during his rise as a real estate mogul in 1980s New York.

Trump’s chief campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, threatened legal action after the Cannes premiere to prevent the “garbage” film from being released before November. it served as “election interference by Hollywood elites.”

The makers are not afraid of a lawsuit.

“Trump is threatening to sue the mailman, so I’m not surprised,” screenwriter and journalist Gabriel Sherman told EW. ‘He basically just does what Roy Cohn told him to do: he attacks. …I know how thoroughly researched and solid the movie is, so I’m not worried.

Even one of the film’s own investors, former Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, is said to have done so tried to block its release — after realizing at a screening in February that it was not, as he had thought, a flattering portrayal of Trump.

“I remember talking to everyone at the beginning of the summer about this movie not coming out,” Strong told EW, adding, “And the possibility of that level of eventual censorship in this country, right now, felt like a dangerous harbinger.”

Although director Ali Abbasi called the sudden disinterest after its glowing Cannes premiere “quite shocking,” he understands that hesitant buyers “don’t want to have any problems.”

Ortenberg, meanwhile, said he still can’t fathom that this is the same industry he joined 40 years ago and lamented how quickly Hollywood’s artistic and business communities seemed willing to appease Trump.

“That really gets to the heart of the matter: if you bend the knee to the authoritarian in advance, you only increase the chance of that authoritarianism,” he added. “So to see Hollywood bend the knee in unison to Trump is deeply disturbing to me.”

“The Apprentice” opens in theaters nationwide on October 11.