After screenwriter Gabriel Sherman’s The Apprentice debuted to a rapturous reception in Cannes, Donald Trump tried to block the film from landing a distribution deal. It almost worked.
“I remembered, like the night of the premiere, getting this general sense that because Trump had filed the cease and desist letter, there was this feeling of… we just gotta see how this plays out,” Sherman says. “It's gonna [maybe] take a few days to see if anyone wants to make an offer and those offers never materialized.”
But Briarcliff Entertainment founder Tom Ortenberg stepped up. It wasn’t the first time that he dared to release a film that others were afraid to touch. In the first of a two part conversation about The Apprentice, Sherman tells us all about the risks of making a movie about prominent attorney and prosecutor Roy Cohn’s mentorship of a young Donald Trump. And Ortenberg shares why he took the film on — even in the face of threats — and how it became a sprint to get The Apprentice into theaters just a month after establishing the distribution deal.