Threatening legal action against the creators of Ali Abassi’s biographical drama The Apprentice, which made its Cannes competition debut on Sunday (May 19), is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Campaign chief spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement regarding the movie that was made available to the Hollywood trades on Monday: “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.” This crap is entirely fictional and sensationalises long-debunked claims.
The statement continued, “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation; it belongs in a dumpster fire, not in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-close discount movie store. It should not see the light of day.”
The Apprentice, which follows Trump’s ascent to prominence as a real estate mogul in the 1970s and 1980s, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as his fixer Roy Cohn.
The movie has been sold internationally by Rocket Science, but prior to the Cannes premiere, US reps CAA Media Finance and WME Independent had not disclosed a US agreement. According to Screen, US consumers are wary of the box office prospects of highly talked-about movies like The Apprentice.
