Daniel Bekerman never set out to produce a political film.
That’s despite the fact that The Apprentice, the movie his Toronto-based production company Scythia Films took on, is about one of the most polarizing political figures in recent memory: former U.S. president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.
It’s also despite the fact that both Bekerman and director Ali Abbasi have stated that the film is in no way a hit piece or propaganda, but instead an emotional character study aimed at those of all political stripes. (Bekerman described it as a “conversation starter, to say the least.”)
Still, that’s not how it’s been interpreted.
The biopic that begins and ends far before its subject actually entered politics has itself become a political hot potato — one that Bekerman says is a test case on whether Hollywood has an appetite for films meant to challenge or influence audiences — or simply exist as anything beyond pure escapism.
“If you have companies, in this case the big corporate distribution system, that [are] willing to let that sort of culture of fear and intimidation govern their choices, then that’s a particular kind of world to live in,” he said.
“That did happen to us. And, you know, maybe we’re a bit of a canary in the coal mine on that.”
Though The Apprentice hit 115 theatres across Canada on Friday, its journey to the screen hasn’t been straightforward.
After a cease-and-desist letter from Trump’s legal team, the movie’s main financier Kinematics backed out, with a statement from the company citing “creative difference.”
That followed a Variety article, reporting that Kinematics-backer and Trump ally Dan Snyder first spearheaded support for the project because he was under the impression it would be a flattering depiction of the former president, before launching a campaign to re-edit the film after actually watching it.
Industry ‘afraid of repercussions,’ distributor says
The film was only able to make its way to a theatrical release after a truly Herculean grassroots funding campaign and a last-minute investment from indie distributor Briarcliff Entertainment.
The founder of that company, Tom Ortenberg, was also behind distribution of Michael Moore’s Iraq War film Fahrenheit 9/11, the Catholic Church child-abuse drama Spotlight and Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination documentary The Dissident. He also fought to release Kevin Smith’s Christianity critique Dogma against protest from religious groups.
“He’s the one distributor who had the balls to take it on and not be intimidated by those threats,” Bekerman said of Ortenberg.
Meanwhile, Ortenberg himself told the Hollywood Reporter that virtually all studios and distributors were “running away from the picture” not because of financial or artistic concerns, but based on the industry’s deeply ingrained fear of anything truly cutting.
“They’re cowards,” he told the outlet. “Many in the industry are afraid of repercussions should Trump win the election. And to me, that’s heartbreaking. I keep liking to think that we as an industry are better than that, and I keep getting reminded that we’re not.”
Cinematic lightning rods
Ty Burr, who served as the Boston Globe’s film critic from 2002 to 2021 and currently writes for the Washington Post, agrees.
“Especially in these incredibly polarized times, a movie that’s perceived to be political is just going to be … a lightning rod for people on either side,” he said.
That is especially apparent in this case, Burr said, given the filmmaker’s attempts to argue the film isn’t actually political.
He says that stance is “either disingenuous or naive or both, because you can’t talk about Donald Trump without it being political at this moment in time, and really for the past eight years.”
But the reason to market a film as not political — and for studios and distributors to keep such productions at arms length — he says, is far deeper than any worry about Trump regaining office.
Instead, he suggests there’s a widespread reluctance to upset audiences.
That can be seen in everything from studios screening franchise films for focus groups of dedicated fans, to director Lee Isaac Chung’s intentional decision to keep any mention of climate change out of Twisters, — something Burr called “an act of commercial cowardice.”
That’s not to say political films — or at least films that become inescapably tangled up with ongoing political debates — aren’t released. The film September 5, about the Munich Olympic hostage crisis, is releasing in late November.
Russians at War saw considerable coverage at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Dennis Quaid’s Reagan biopic hit theatres a little over a month ago, and Sound of Freedom, a film that was immensely popular with followers of QAnon, earned almost 20 times its budget at the box office.
But they also tend to encounter opposition. The Apprentice, Sound of Freedom and Reagan were all forced to seek independent financing options outside the traditional Hollywood system. And after Russians at War screened to journalists and industry members at TIFF, huge protests resulted in public screenings being paused, while the film itself was dropped by its distributor.
And while September 5 was acquired by Paramount, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg claimed TIFF specifically chose to exclude it, “ostensibly because it might generate controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Meanwhile, Feinberg’s Oscar frontrunners list, which projected the film as no. 1 among best picture nominees, has already generated the sort of online controversy that Burr says can frighten distributors.
‘Russians at War’ had two screenings at TIFF on Tuesday, after the festival suspended showings earlier this week due to security concerns. CBC’s Britnei Bilhete has the latest.
‘There goes your ticket sales’
To circumvent that, studios sometimes go another route.
Civil War, this year’s Alex Garland film about the United States finally breaking down, was marketed as a kind of commentary on the polarized nature of contemporary politics. Despite that, the film remains almost entirely apolitical — a strategy Burr says allowed it to hijack the excitement of a political moment without actually engaging with it.
“Serious movies that are about politics that come out of Hollywood … will bend over backwards to not actually take a stand,” he said. “Because to take a stand threatens to alienate half your audience. And there goes your ticket sales.”
Aaron Michael, a Canadian TikTok creator and Newfoundland-based film expert who researches and documents box-office flops, says that concern has only grown in recent years.
While releasing a film that criticizes the beliefs of an entire group has always run the risk of minimizing box-office returns, those films almost always tend to at least break even, Michael explained. From 1992’s Bulworth, to Chris Rock’s Head of State and 2014’s Kill the Messenger, he said their relatively smaller budgets were often low enough to ensure a favourable box-office return.
Now, he says, “there’s definitely a drop off in the box-office performance.” While past films like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 could earn over $200 million US, Michael says the age of the $100 million politically minded documentary is firmly over.
It’s part of a trend that, as Variety reported earlier this year, influenced the closure of Participant Media. That production company, founded with the express mission of creating films that “inspire social justice and humanitarian action,” worked alongside Ortenberg on Spotlight, and was behind Green Book, Lincoln and An Inconvenient Truth.
Companies like Participant throwing in the towel suggests an extreme lack of appetite for movies that might divide audiences, which Michael suggests could be a telling reality for the future of the film landscape.
“If you focus group the movie and the audience would be split down the middle — no one’s touching that,” he said. “No one wants a movie that splits down the middle.”
