A few excerpts from Vanity Fair reporter Gabe Sherman’s story about how his screenplay The Apprentice got financed, filmed, and finally got a release date in the US this month, starting with how he began working on it in 2017 and then shopped it around Hollywood, without a lot of luck:
Reporters want to hold powerful people accountable; studio executives want to reach the widest audience, which often means offending as few people as possible. No major Hollywood studio or streamer wanted to finance the film. “Call me if Trump loses,” one top executive said at a cocktail party after he told me how much he loved the script. But even after Trump lost, studios still passed. The January 6 Capitol riot made the subject seem too dangerous.
That meant we would have to finance the movie independently. The model worked like this: Baer would raise most of the production budget by “preselling” rights to distribute the movie in every territory except the United States. An equity investor would provide the rest of the money. We would shoot the movie and show it at a major festival like Cannes, where American distributors would bid to acquire the distribution rights. Baer’s ability to presell to overseas buyers depended on casting stars with big international fan bases to play Trump and Cohn. I wasn’t prepared for actors, many of whom were #Resistance members, to be reluctant about the movie. One turned down the role of Trump saying he didn’t want to give his “humanity” to the president.
Then he met director Ali Abbasi and shook on it. Actors Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova, and Jeremy Strong signed on. Next it was time to find some financing to start filming.
