“It’s time to make movies political again,” director Ali Abbasi said after unveiling his Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday — and he swiftly got his wish. “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement to The Times.
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store[.] [I]t belongs in a dumpster fire.” Abbasi, whose film depicts attorney and Trump mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) teaching the young real-estate scion (Sebastian Stan) that the first rule of engagement is “attack, attack, attack,” isn’t fazed.
“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” he said Tuesday at the film’s Cannes press conference, to laughter and applause from many in the room. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.” “We encourage them to actually see the film,” added producer Daniel Bekerman.
“Clearly they haven’t yet.” Abbasi went on to offer Trump a private screening and conversation about the film, should he be interested, even venturing that the 45th president would not dislike the film if he gave it a chance. That seems unlikely.