TORONTO – It’s approaching midnight in Toronto and “The Apprentice” director Ali Abbasi is sitting with his intrepid distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment’s Tom Ortenberg, and producer James Shani, in the bar of the Ritz Carlton.
“We are getting toothless,” Abbasi says, referring to Hollywood. “The studio bosses told me themselves they’re not taking enough risk.”
None of them would take a risk on his feature film about Donald Trump, starring Sebastian Stan as a much-younger Trump and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn, which just had a sneak screening for press at TIFF. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and, despite strong reviews, was snubbed by one US distributor after another.