Moviegoers across the country have fired The Apprentice.
The controversial Trump biopic — which portrays the young Donald Trump as a rapist — is set to gross around $1.5 million on its opening weekend. That’s an embarrassingly low figure given the movie received a wide release on 1,740 screens, for a per-screen average of about $862.
Since most screens feature multiple showings a day, that means from late Thursday to Sunday, there was an average of around five people per showing — in other words, mostly empty theaters.
The expected weekend gross of $1.5 million is even less than pre-release forecasts predicting movie would gross around $3 million.
The Apprentice received reams of free publicity from the mainstream news media, which eagerly promoted the movie in the weeks leading up to its release this weekend. The movie scored puff-piece coverage from such outlets as The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, and the Hollywood trade publications like Variety.
But the extensive coverage clearly failed to whip up enthusiasm in the general public.
The wholesale rejection by moviegoers comes after Hollywood itself rejected The Apprentice, with every major studio and streamer declining to finance or distribute the title. Most speciality labels also passed on the movie, leaving Briarcliff Entertainment to swoop in at the last minute to mount a domestic release.
But even Briarcliff needed the help of a crowdsourcing campaign to cover distribution costs.
Briarcliff obliged The Apprentice director Ali Abbasi’s wish to see the movie open just prior to November’s presidential election, presumably to maximize media coverage. At the movie’s splashy world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it played in competition but failed to win any prizes, Abbasi trashed former President Donald Trump as a fascist.
The Apprentice fictionalizes Trump’s rise to prominence during the 1970’s and early 80s, focusing on his relationship with his mentor Roy Cohn. In the movie, the young Trump is played by actor Sebastian Stan while Cohn is played as a Luciferian character by HBO’s Succession star Jeremy Strong.
One scene shows Donald Trump raping his wife Ivanka Trump — a claim Ivanka Trump publicly denied. Other scenes show Donald Trump undergoing plastic surgery.
As Breitbart News reported, lawyers for former President Donald Trump sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers of The Apprentice in an effort to block the movie’s release, warning the producers not to pursue a domestic distribution deal.
Vanity Fair scribe Gabriel Sherman wrote the screenplay. On Saturday, Sherman spoke with “Breitbart News Saturday,” saying the movie shows the “relentlessness” of former President Donald Trump and how he did not “stop until” he got what he was trying to accomplish.
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