Anti-Trump Biopic Flops, Plays To Empty Theaters Despite Fawning Media Coverage

“The Apprentice,” a controversial biopic that portrays a young Donald Trump as a rapist, is an absolute box office bomb despite fawning media coverage.

According to a report from Breitbart News, the film is set to gross just $1.5 million in 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,” Breitbart News reported.

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“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.”

Glowing coverage and spotlights from several prominent media outlets have been unable to save the film, which is coming in well below its opening weekend expected gross of $3.5 million. The movie received puff pieces from the New York Times, CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, and several entertainment magazines, such as Variety.

The film, which stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has been billed as an “exploration of power and ambition set in a world of corruption and deceit,” according to an official synopsis. “It’s a mentor-protege story that charts the origins of an American dynasty. Filled with larger than life characters, it reveals the moral and human cost of a culture defined by winners and losers,” the synopsis reads.

“The Apprentice,” despite its title, does not cover Trump’s highly successful business reality show and admits that large swaths of the film are entirely fictionalized. One scene in the film shows Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump, a claim she publicly denied. Other scenes show the former president undergoing plastic surgery.

Director Ali Abassi referred to the former president as a “fascist” while the film was in competition at Cannes, where it failed to win any awards.

The film also failed to score a distribution deal from any major studio or streaming platforms, leaving Briarcliff Entertainment to swoop in for a last-minute domestic release. Crowdfunding was still needed in order to release the film prior to Election Day as Abassi had wished.

Lawyers for the former president previously sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers prior to its debut. “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, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement to CNN. “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, it belongs in a dumpster fire.”

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