‘The Apprentice’ Director Offers Trump Film Screening Following Campaign’s Lawsuit Threat

Ali Abbasi’s film The Apprentice premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Monday evening and no sooner than the run time could reach its conclusion was the Trump Campaign already threatening to file a lawsuit. In response, Abbasi is extending the offer for Donald Trump to see the film for himself and draw his own conclusions, confident that the ex-president would be “surprised.”

“I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike,” Abbasi shared in response to the threat of legal action, according to Variety. “I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know? And like I’ve said before, I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening, and have a chat afterward if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign.”

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He added: “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people — they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?”

Following the film’s premiere, Trump campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, shared a statement to Rolling Stone stating: “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.”

Cheung went on to assert that the film is an example of “election interference by Hollywood elites,” comparing it to “the illegal Biden Trials” and a last-ditch effort to sabotage Trump’s candidacy. Returning to the topic at hand, he added: “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.”

The Apprentice reportedly features a scene in which Trump, portrayed by Sebastian Stan, throws his first wife, Ivana Trump, to the floor and sexually assaults her. Ivana described a similar assault in her 1990 sworn deposition during their divorce proceedings. Revealed in Harry Hurt III’s 1993 book, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, the accusations claimed Trump pushed her to the floor and pulled out chunks of her hair.

At a press conference for the film, Abbasi didn’t directly address the scene. He did, however, mention that he hopes an uncut version of the film can land in U.S. theaters this September ahead of the election.

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