“The Apprentice,” a controversial biopic depicting a young Donald Trump as a rapist, has proven to be a significant box office failure despite receiving extensive media attention. A report from Breitbart News indicates that the film is projected to earn only $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,” the report said.
“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,” it added. Despite receiving glowing coverage and attention from several major media outlets — many of the same ones who panned Trump-supporting actor Dennis Quaid who played President Ronald Reagan in a recently released biopic “Reagan” — the film is significantly underperforming, with its opening weekend gross expected to be only $1.5 million—well below the anticipated $3.5 million. It garnered favorable write-ups from the New York Times, CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, and various entertainment publications, including 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 characters larger than life, it reveals the moral and human cost of a culture defined by winners and losers,” the synopsis continued.
“The Apprentice,” despite its title, does not focus on Trump’s highly successful business reality show and openly acknowledges that significant portions of the film are entirely fictionalized. One scene depicts Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump, a claim she has publicly denied. Other scenes portray the former president undergoing plastic surgery.
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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