Americans don't want to see Trump movies but it's a different story elsewhere

i amI'll be the first to admit that I didn't want to see The Apprentice, the new film chronicling Donald Trump's rise through 1970s and '80s New York. Like most people in my liberal social circle, my reaction to the film's existence was basically: Why? Watch a de-handsome (though still recognizable) two-hour Ken with Sebastian Stan as a young real estate mogul and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn, going through events I already know—if not in exact detail, then certainly in spirit— A man in my life that I actively wish I knew less about?

And yet I found the film, written by Vanity Fair's Trump chronicler Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, surprising. Not materially — even if you didn't read Trump's best before his 2015 presidential campaign, his public persona has long been consistent — but in his simplistic approach to portraying the former president's life. Although Republican figures and Trump himself dismissed it as a hack (or more specifically, “a cheap, defamatory and politically odious piece of work, released just before the 2024 presidential election, to try and hurt the greatest political movement in history) Our Country “, as Trump wrote in Truth Social), The Apprentice is an overall sincere movie, trying to portray a highly controversial figure as close to the emotional truth as possible, while entertaining. As Sherman told me before its release: “It's such a universal story about the apprentice surpassing the master … I hope people can experience it on its own terms and not bring all their political baggage to it.”

A nice sentiment, which means, unfortunately, it will never go down well with the highly polarized American audience. I remember, as I watched Stan do as decent a job as possible in the role of a man whose tics are known to millions, as Strong effectively conveyed Cohn's lizard stare and quiet ruthlessness, that it didn't really matter how good the Apprentice was to dig into Donald Trump's character. Delivered on his self-appointed mission. American audiences, most of whom aren't inclined to put aside political baggage near an election, won't bite; It may only appeal to people outside the US, who either don't have to think about him every day or don't have some local understanding of Trump's uniquely American celebrity.

To wit: The film, after a long and difficult distribution search that nearly killed the movie, grossed just $1.6 million in 1,740 US theaters in its opening weekend – a flop, especially for a film with awards aspirations. Unsurprisingly, it found most of its audience in large, urban liberal enclaves like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington DC. But The Apprentice performed relatively well overseas – it earned $835,000 in its opening weekend in the UK, falling behind The Wild Robot and Smile 2 (Regulations generally sees it as the 10th largest at the US box office), and over $623,000 in 319 theaters in France.

Part of the film's domestic box office woes are due to business issues beyond the filmmakers' control. After a splash premiere and positive critical reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May, The Apprentice struggled to find distribution, partly due to Trump's political influence and partly due to old-fashioned market timidity. Days after the premiere, reports surfaced that the film's main financier, Kinematics – founded by the son-in-law of billionaire Trump donor Dan Snyder – objected to a scene depicting Trump's alleged rape of his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova). (The scene, like everything on The Apprentice, is grounded in some historical record; Ivana recounted the incident under oath in a 1990 divorce deposition.) Simultaneously, Trump's legal team issued a cease-and-desist order, threatening to sue. The objections had their intended chilling effect — passed by every major American distributor and streaming service, according to the filmmakers

The Apprentice hit theaters thanks to a Kickstarter campaign (dubbed “Release The Apprentice”), Kinetics' last-minute purchase, and renegade indie outlet Briarcliff Entertainment's 11th-hour save. The tactics effectively gave Briarcliff just five weeks to market the film — a short window that denied US networks air spots during political coverage, not to mention boycott calls from Republicans like Mike Huckabee.

But the film is ultimately an outsider's perspective on Donald Trump (most of the cast and crew come from Europe or Canada) — perhaps crucial to a fair handling of recent American history, though always a tough sell to US audiences — made with an appeal of objectivity and curiosity that only the US can find. Will work for people out of context. The Apprentice is overall well-made and well-acted, and generally earnest in bringing to life the extensive reporting on the most famous living Americans. It is not no As a film about a student's gradual acceptance of his teacher in A Bankrupt New York, it's still not particularly insightful about it. Although, to be fair, little – despite Republicans' constant delusions of seriousness, Trump has clearly said who he is for a long, long time, and has been in the news on a daily basis for a decade. Nothing is left unsaid.

Still, I agree, logically, with the request of the filmmakers to give it a chance, to resist corporate censorship, to see the film as an opportunity to critique, as Abbasi says, “the social Darwinism that is built into American society, which did not come with Trump and will not end with Trump”. To accept it, to paraphrase executive producer James Shani, will not teach you anything new, but will make you feel different. (Discomfort, for one, or the limitation of one's pre-existing fatigue.) Why, all good and open-minded and artistic intentions aside, is this falling on deaf ears in this country.