The Apprentice, which centers on Trump’s early years as a New York real estate magnate, stars US actor Sebastian Stan as Trump.
The former president called the movie “fake and classless” and expressed his desire that it would “bomb” at the box office, threatening to sue the makers.
The director has called the process of developing and releasing the movie “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” and it had a hard time finding a distributor in the US.
Speaking to the Lizo Mzimba, Ali Abbasi said that finding a distributor after the film’s May debut was tough and described the process of creating and releasing the movie as “by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.”
When we had a standing ovation at the [film festival] in Cannes and everyone was ecstatic and complimentary, I thought there would be a bidding war and wondered if I should choose Warner or Netflix.
Abbasi claimed that, contrary to the director’s predictions, he later discovered that “it was extremely difficult for us to get a distributor”—possibly as a result of Trump’s threat of legal action.
