With the US elections inexorably approaching, the most talked about movie of the year has flopped. The Apprentice, the much-discussed, much-condemned biopic of the young Donald Trump, grossed just $1.6 million in its opening weekend in the United States, ranking 10th, below films like Terrifier 3, Joker: Folie à Deux, and Terrifier 3. Perhaps most embarrassing was the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 30-year-old movie that most of its audience could have watched via a streaming service if they wanted.
Although Ali Abbasi’s film wasn’t made on a huge budget (star Sebastian Stan’s next big movie, the Marvel epic Thunderbolts, likely cost $16 million to cater for), it’s still likely to end its theatrical run as a sizable flop. It certainly won’t make a material difference to the election.
The situation was completely different when the film premiered in Cannes earlier this year. Trump was then expected to face Biden at the ballot box this November, and the incumbent president was widely viewed as a seriously flawed opponent whose rumors of onset dementia would make him relatively easy to defeat. But the circumstances under which the film was first released were an example of a bait-and-switch that its subject was surely ruefully fascinated by.
This project was being financed by American billionaire businessman Dan Snyder, who underwrote the cost of The Apprentice, mistakenly believing it would be a flattering portrait of his friend. When he saw the completed artwork, Snyder threw a hissy fit to end all hissy fits, sending legal letters bearing the words “cease and desist” flying in all directions. There was even talk that the film, which received great acclaim when it was released, would be cancelled. Political movies are always a hard sell in any market, but when they’re this filled with controversy they verge on being toxic.
The film met its end in Hollywood when Briarcliff Entertainment, run by businessman Tom Ortenberg, stepped in to purchase distribution rights. It didn’t solve the problem, he was only able to purchase the rights at the end of August, before it was released on October 11. Lack of time made it difficult to invest in an advertising campaign that would attract curious moviegoers to movie theaters.
When interviewed by the Hollywood Reporter about the circumstances behind the purchase, Ortenberg said: “I heard about the cease and desist letter from the Trump campaign. I read that the film received great response from both critics and audiences at Cannes. I just assumed it would be too expensive for me to buy.” Then, within days of the world premiere, I started reading stories about how not only the major studios but also some of the indie elite were avoiding the film for reasons that had nothing to do with finances or artistic merit, but were based strictly on cowardice.”
For Ortenberg, this was a fight talk. After seeing and approving the picture, he made a distribution offer, but was unable, in his words, to “actually close the domestic distribution deal” until a negotiation between the filmmakers and financiers was agreed upon. In other words, Snyder was torn between his desire to see the film canceled outright and the businessman who wanted at least some of his money back. Therefore, after much negotiation, Briarcliff was allowed to release the film.
Ortenberg had no illusions that the film would be an instant box office hit. “We look at this as a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “This isn’t about opening weekend, and it’s not about how many screens or this or that. “It’s about the legacy of the film, which I think will be strong throughout awards season and beyond.” But this isn’t the ’70s or ’80s, when an independent-minded political drama like this could succeed through word of mouth. In the new age of cinema, if you fail on opening weekend, you’re dead in the water because attendees will turn their screens to other, more profitable films.
Ortenberg, who had also acquired the rights to another controversial project, railed against fellow distributors of Jonathan Majors, whose Magazine Dreams starred, but none of them were interested in releasing The Apprentice. “They are cowards,” he said. “Many in the industry fear the repercussions if Trump wins the election. And to me, that’s heartbreaking. “I keep thinking we’re better than that as an industry, and I’m constantly reminded that we’re not.”
He may very well be a partisan Democrat, and his intentions for the film may be to throw a grenade into the already heated political mix in America right now. But if Ortenberg had taken a step back, he might have wondered whether The Apprentice (its excellent reviews aside) is really the movie everyone wants or needs to watch right now.
The film’s screenplay, written by Gabriel Sherman, was considered one of Hollywood’s hottest films when he wrote it in 2018, in the middle of Trump’s first term. This film was offered to many great directors working today, including Clint Eastwood and Paul Thomas Anderson; both were shaped by small-scale political dramas. However, both of them turned down this offer. Abassi later said: “The producers of The Apprentice were having a hard time finding the right director who would risk his career.” “They had to assess 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 described the film—perhaps sarcastically—as “totally non-partisan… I don’t think it’s a movie he wouldn’t like” about Trump’s reaction. “I don’t think you’ll like it very much, but I think you’ll be surprised.”
Interestingly, the film received criticism from both the Left and the Right. Shirley Li wrote in The Atlantic that it “is a muddied work in Trumpology that never answers the biggest question it raises: What does chronicling Trump’s beginnings illuminate about one of the most documented and least mysterious men in recent American history?” It’s telling that the film is as much about Trump as it is about the character of Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, played by the excellent Jeremy Strong, before Cohn died of AIDS in 1986. He was an undercover lawyer who became his protégé’s political fixer, lying to the latter about the nature of his illness.
Strong never held back when it came to putting forward his opinions during the interview. “This is a Frankenstein movie,” he said recently. “They told us not to frame it that way, but let’s be honest. Cohn’s malignant legacy is denial, and that’s what he passed on to Trump: the need to hate the world and the need to punish and act out of hatred.” This is not the non-partisan view expressed by Abbasi.
Strong continued: “Part of the mess we’re in comes from our demonization of the other side, and so making a movie about Trump that vilifies him would be deeply irresponsible. Gaining insight and empathy isn’t bad.” But it’s hard not to think that the finished product is, in his opinion, a wildly successful but fundamentally biased account of how a bad guy gets worse, rather than a more interesting and nuanced account of what makes a New York businessman the most talked about in American history. (Posters for the film in the United Kingdom foreshadow a GQ review calling the film a “Supervillain origin story”; more than enough on balance.)
This is largely the film’s undoing. Donald Trump is someone every voter in the United States is familiar with; This is partly because he has already served as President – for better or worse, his record is still the subject of fierce debate – and partly because he has a rare talent for self-promotion. competitors could not imitate. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying he has a stand-up comedian’s gift for timing and impact; For all the success he portrays, Stan doesn’t come close to embodying that on the big screen.
The Apprentice may have emerged at the right time in terms of topicality, but it was also published almost relentlessly at a time when Trump was on TV and in newspapers every day. If audiences, say, in the millions for Oppenheimer, were willing to pay to be entertained and distracted for a few hours, they would likely choose something that evokes escapism or political history. a more distant era rather than delving into something reminiscent of current events.
Strong’s motivation for appearing in the film was simple and laudable. He suggested: “The world is on fire, so I want to hold the mirror up to it. In this age of increasing noise, artificial intelligence and digital life, art with radical honesty is needed more than ever. “I want to be a part of it.” Ortenberg should likewise be commended for putting his money where his principles are.
Whatever the outcome of the 2024 election, The Apprentice will ultimately be seen on its own terms as a successful and compelling character study of two remarkable, deeply flawed men. But its theatrical failure will likely lead to fewer risk-taking pictures like this being made. It might have been more successful as an HBO miniseries or Netflix’s one-and-done series, and there might have been more artistic interest if actors and filmmakers whose politics were more obscure than card-carrying Democrats had been involved. Stan says that when he signed on to produce the film, he was told, “‘You’re making a mistake, you’re alienating half the country.'” However, he still felt that this role was a significant challenge and one to which he rose.
Still, the question remains whether liberal Hollywood can make a biopic that truly represents Donald Trump (with all his predictable political views) or whether, to them, Trump will always remain a bogeyman beyond compare. The apprentice may nod in the previous direction, but ultimately lacks the courage to step off the track.
Abassi may look back wistfully at the last Ronald Reagan biopic, starring Trump voters Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight, which has overcome predictably hostile reviews to earn nearly $30 million at the box office so far: his movie is unlikely to come close. As the upcoming elections may or may not prove, sometimes people just get tired of being told they are wrong and ignorant, and they will vote with their money – or their votes – in ways that may make the liberal elite uncomfortable.