Donald Trump biopic ‘The Apprentice’ launches Kickstarter campaign to raise marketing budget
The filmmakers and producers behind The Apprentice, the biopic about Donald Trump’s younger years, have started a fundraising campaign in order to raise a marketing budget through Kickstarter.
The Apprentice has been directed by Ali Abbasi and takes place in the 1970s during Trump’s first forays into business. It focuses on his relationship with the New York City prosecutor and fixer Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong of Succession fame.
When Abbasi’s film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, a scene in which Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, rapes his then-wife Ivana angered the former US president, who threatened to begin legal action against its filmmakers and their “pure fiction”.
Now, the filmmakers and producers are hoping to keep The Apprentice “in as many theaters for as long as possible” according to a press release. Through the Kickstarter campaign, backers will be entitled to privileges, including streaming rights for those donating $25 and credit mentions for those offering up $100.
The movie had hoped to raise £76,273, and has already surpassed that total. As it stands, over £92,000 has been pledged by film fans.
Producer Dan Bekerman noted, “Despite the integrity of the film and without even seeing it, Trump’s campaign sought to suppress it. The idea that artists can no longer freely criticize the powerful should concern us all. We need your help to resoundingly reject this dangerous precedent.”
At Cannes, Abbasi told the film’s audience that he wanted to make cinema “relevant” and “political” again and that he hoped that The Apprentice would help to “deal with the rising wave of fascism” that Trump’s politics are often aligned within the press.
In fact, Abbasi suggested that Trump might be interested in watching the film himself, explaining, “I don’t necessarily think he would like it, but I think he’d be surprised. So I’m happy to meet him, have a screening and then we can discuss it afterwards.”
The Apprentice has managed to secure a distribution deal in the UK and Ireland, but there were problems in the US, perhaps owing to Trump and his legal team’s disavowal of the film. Now, though, with the Kickstarter campaign, the producers and filmmakers behind the movie are hoping that it will stick around in cinemas for as long as possible.
With the presidential election taking place in November of this year, The Apprentice could well play a hand in influencing the outcome, at least to the hopes of Abbasi and his collaborators.
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