“The Apprentice” cannot find an American distributor: is Hollywood afraid?

“I think it's time to make relevant films,” Ali Abbasi told the enthusiastic crowd at the May 20 Cannes premiere of his Donald Trump biopic. The apprentice. “It’s time to make cinema political again.”

Hollywood doesn't seem to be listening. Despite the enthusiastic response to The apprentice internationally – the film, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and SuccessionJeremy Strong's Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, his master-of-the-dark-arts political mentor, has been sold to almost every territory – the film is still struggling to find a US distributor. This is despite, as Abbasi calls it, “this fall's promotional event, the US elections”, which would seem to provide an ideal launch pad and plenty of free publicity for any national distributor.

An American agreement to The apprentice is complicated by the fact that Kinematics, the company backed by pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, invested in the film against domestic rights and must approve any sale. Snyder reportedly hates the film, which includes scenes of Trump abusing amphetamines, undergoing liposuction and scalp reduction surgery and, most controversially, a graphic sequence showing him raping his first wife, Ivana. (Ivana filed a rape complaint during her divorce proceedings from Trump in the early '90s, but later disavowed her debunked testimony, saying she wasn't talking about rape in the “literal or criminal sense.”)

But the fact is that American buyers have been wary of political films for some time now. If political controversy was once the recipe for box office success – Michael Moore's anti-Bush doc Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed $119 million domestically and $222 million worldwide in 2004 – changing audience demographics, including a decline in the adult-skewing fare market post-COVID, pushed anything overtly policy for significant financial risk. Adam McKay's 2018 feature film Vice was arguably the last great American political biopic and, with a domestic gross of $48 million against a reported budget of over $60 million, a major failure.

“I like politics, I like political movies,” a stock investor in The apprentice tell THR“but an investment [or] From a business point of view, investing your money in a political film is asking for trouble.

As for the international market, thorny issues for the United States, like Trump, have an easier time finding their place. But localized problems give international distributors pause (for example, no films on Brexit in Great Britain), with pressure coming less from the public than from right-wing movements attacking films perceived as left-wing since, unlike in the United States , government grants are the main source of funding. for European films.

In April, Participant Media, Hollywood's leading financier of socially conscious films, producer of Academy Award-winning films Projector And Judas and the Black Messiah and documents such as An inconvenient truth And RGB, stopped completely. Many studios fear a MAGA backlash toward films perceived as too “woke,” which can include anything from a diverse cast to even mention of the LGBTQ+ community. Disney is still suffering from its battle with Governor Ron DeSantis over his opposition to Florida's “don't say gay” laws. In April, after surviving a proxy fight by activist shareholders including Nelson Peltz, Disney CEO Bob Iger declared that the studio's primary mission “must be to entertain, [not] be agenda-driven.

“All American companies are terrified of being sued, of being canceled,” says Mikael Fellenius, CEO of Film i Väst, the Swedish state-backed financier that was one of the first stock investors in The apprentice. “The climate has made it much more difficult to produce political films there. »

“The world is now more divided. We are either on the left or on the right, there is no longer any common ground, not even a common reality to discuss these questions,” says a producer knowledgeable about The apprentice trade negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If one audience is pro-Trump, they won’t watch an anti-Trump movie, and the other side won’t watch a pro-Trump movie.”

“People are even more sensitive today than ever to the idea of ​​going out and seeing what might be, at best, a serious film or, at worst, a type of film that a lot of people might relate to disagreement,” adds Shawn Robbins, box office analyst at Box Office Theory.

Instead of stirring up controversy, as marketers did in the past, the best marketing strategy today might be to bury politics altogether. During Alex Garland's press session Civil war, a near-future dystopian drama set during a conflict involving an authoritarian U.S. government and a series of secessionist movements, distributor A24 has worked to present the film as nonpartisan. It paid off, with Civil war earning $68 million domestically from an audience split in red and blue states, and over $100 million worldwide.

This non-partisan approach is fueled by a shift in strategy on the part of streamers. Political films and documentaries were once considered a strength, especially for awards season — see Netflix's acquisition of Rome Or The Trial of the Chicago 7 – but now the focus is on mainstream content with as broad and global an appeal as possible.

Icarus, the 2017 documentary about Russian doping directed by Bryan Fogel, won best documentary feature at the Academy Awards, giving Netflix one of its first Oscars. Fogel led a follow-up, Icarus: the consequences, focused on whistleblower Grigori Rodchenkov and Russia's efforts to discredit him. After receiving positive reviews from Telluride in 2022, the film is still available for pickup. That same year, Black fish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite made her debut The input, about powerful nations, including Saudi Arabia and China, buying up other countries' land and resources. The film remained unreleased for two years until, in May, the specialist company Magnolia took it back.

Independent film producer Ted Hope, formerly Amazon's co-head of films, is rolling out Invisible Nation, a documentary about democracy in Taiwan directed by his wife, Vanessa Hope. Because distributors don't want to anger China, says Ted Hope, filmmakers have been forced to get creative in getting the film seen, relying on film festivals, screenings organized by non-profit organizations such as the Asia Society and academic institutions rather than a major distribution deal. . He adds: “Streamers don’t want to touch anything controversial. »

For the documentary, which independent distributor Abramaorama opened in a New York theater on May 31 and plans to be released in Los Angeles on June 20, the Hopes forgo global VOD platforms that rely on relations with China, like Apple and Amazon, and instead streams on independent platform Kinema. “If you want to go to China, you can't show Invisible Nation” said Hope.

Tense Hollywood politics are seen as an obstacle to distribution deals. union, the documentary about the founding and creation of the Amazon Labor Union and attempts to unionize an Amazon warehouse on Long Island premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews, but did not yet been distributed. Multiple sources attribute this, at least in part, to the Hollywood industry's cessation of social unrest in 2023, a months-long battle between its unions and the studios that has further shaken the industry.

Participant Media's recent departure will only make the situation more difficult for filmmakers making political films, Hope says. Even The New York Times, which produced feature films, withdrew its documentation efforts. “I used to have so many different choices about how to make or view my film,” says Hope. “Now I have to put my camel through the eye of a needle.”

Of course, all of this must be viewed through the prism of the broader economics of today's domestic market, where the box office is almost dismal and studios are struggling with austerity measures, layoffs, reorganizations and mergers and acquisitions activities. since the end of the two industrial stoppage strikes. Something studio executives are more concerned about than political blowback: the bottom line.

“The market and the ability to make money trump political concerns,” says one veteran sales agent. “But what if you have both?” Forget that.”

Rebecca Keegan contributed to this report.

This story first appeared in the June 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.