Ali Abbasi’s movie follows a young Donald Trump’s rise under mentor Roy Cohn.
Ali Abbasi’s movie follows a young Donald Trump’s rise under mentor Roy Cohn.
Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice released its first trailer on Tuesday ahead of the much-discussed movie’s October release.
The film, from director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman, follows Sebastian Stan as a young Trump under the mentorship of Jeremy Strong‘s Roy Cohn. Upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney wrote that the movie is “a reverse reflection of the mentorship process, in which the host becomes the hungry young upstart, laying the foundations for a business empire built in part out of smoke and mirrors, and operating under the guidance of a master manipulator.”
Several months later, the project was acquired by Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment for a pre-election release on Oct. 11. The distribution news came on the heels of several months of tension between the movie and the Trump campaign, the latter of which issued legal threats against potential distributors.
“A young Donald Trump eager to make his name as a hungry second son of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn, the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today,” the film’s description reads. “Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé—someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.”
The Apprentice will appear at some fall film festivals in the lead-up to Oct. 11 and be treated to a full awards campaign.
Watch the trailer below.