The Apprentice
filmmaker
Ali Abbasi
was asked Tuesday at the film’s
Cannes
Film Festival press conference about
Donald Trump’s legal threats against the movie
following its world premiere here the night before.
“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people, they don’t talk about his success rate [with those lawsuits],” the filmmaker told the press today.
Following the movie’s premiere, where it
received an 11-minute standing ovation
at the Grand Theatre Lumiere, Trump campaign advisor Steven Cheung back in the U.S. declared, “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”
The movie follows the rise of a young 1980s Donald J. Trump, played by Marvel Studios movie icon
Sebastian Stan
, as a real estate baron and how he became inspired to wheel and deal from ruthless attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
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“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Cheung added about Abbasi’s Competition film. “As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”
Abbasi said, “I don’t necessarily think this is a movie [Trump] would dislike, I don’t think he’d necessarily like it, but I think he would be surprised.”
“I would offer to go and meet him and have a chat afterward,” added the filmmaker.
The pic’s producer, Daniel Berkman, added, “We ask them to see the film.”
The movie contains a rape scene in which Trump forces himself on his then-wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). The first former Mrs. Trump, who
died in 2022
, had spoken of the sexual assault in the years following the couple’s divorce but later recanted the incident. Abbasi didn’t discuss the controversial scene during the presser.
Abbasi, while not commenting on who his distributor might be, did say that September 15 would be a nice release date for the movie, timed to the second presidential debate.
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“We have this promotional event, the U.S. election, with us and the movie, so we’re hoping to very much to come out,” said Abbasi.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is facing myriad indictments and is currently in the middle of the Stormy Daniels
hush-money trial
in New York.
At the beginning of today’s press conference, Abbasi read a statement a from Strong, who couldn’t make it to Cannes due to his Broadway commitment starring in Henrik Ibsen’s
An Enemy of the People.
Strong did express how the phrase “enemy of the people” has been used by Trump and how “we’re experiencing Roy Cohn’s long dark shadow.”
Quipped Abbasi, “Obviously, we’re completely non-partisan,” emphasizing that Strong was expressing his own views.
Abbasi said, “This is really not a movie about
Donald Trump
, it’s really a movie about a system and the way power runs through the system. Roy Cohn was an expert in utilizing that system; he taught Donald Trump.”
The director continued, “The idea that there’s a sharp divide in the United States between conservatives and liberals, I think it’s a fantasy. A lot of these people go to the same charity events, the same schools — suffice it is to say that the guy who created MSNBC is the same guy who created Fox News.” [Editor’s note: Abbasi was referring to Roger Ailes, who created the NBC-owned news talk cable channel America’s Talking, which launched in 1994 and was unplugged in favor of MSNBC’s launch in 1996].
“Kurt Vonnegut said there’s a party of winners and a party of losers.”
The Apprentice
is being sold at Cannes by CAA, WME and Rocket Science.