‘The Apprentice’ Film: Sebastian Stan To Play Young Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova Also Join
Production started this week on a feature film titled The Apprentice which follows Donald Trump’s efforts to build a real estate empire in the 1970s and 1980s. Holy Spider filmmaker Ali Abbasi is on board to direct. Gabriel Sherman is writing it.
According to Deadline, Emmy-nominee Sebastian Stan will play a young version of the former US President (note the story will not be centered around his venture into politics, but rather the corrupt and deceitful world of real estate in the late 20th Century). It will also be a mentor-protegé story that will explore Trump’s business relationship with infamous attorney Roy Cohn, as the two set to build a financial empire.
Jeremy Strong, of Succession fame, will play Cohn in the pic. Maria Bakalova is set to play Trump’s first wife Ivana. Bakalova is no stranger to Trump world, of course, having played a pivotal part in the Borat sequel that debuted just a few weeks ahead of the 2020 Presidential Election, featuring a now-infamous moment between her and POTUS’ attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Notice the rush to get The Apprentice into production now, as the producers are clearly hoping to get this in front of audiences by the fall of 2024, when Trump is expected to be the GOP candidate to get to the Oval Office. Will we get another Borat film, or any other tie-in films for the next election cycle? Everything is possible now.
Producers include Daniel Beckerman of Scythia Films, Jacob Jerek of Profile Pictures, and Ruth Treacy of Taylored Films. Amy Baer and Grant Johnson are executive producers, along with Sherman.
Abbasi is coming in hot following his critically acclaimed Holy Spider and directing the last two episodes of The Last of Us season 1. Stan, nominated for an Emmy for his turn as Tommy Lee in Hulu’s Pam & Tommy and mostly known for playing Bucky Barnes in the Marvel films, was last seen in Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money. Bakalova appeared in last year’s Bodies Bodies Bodies and voiced Cosmo the Space Dog in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Strong is currently up for his third Emmy nomination for his role as Kendall Roy in Succession.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
