Director Ali Abbasi basked in the applause, confident that the eight-minute standing ovation “The Apprentice” was enjoying in Cannes last May meant that his six-year gamble to bring the film to the screen was about to pay off.
The movie, a look at Donald Trump’s early years as a real estate developer and his friendship with Roy Cohn, was scouting for distribution. Armed with this kind of reception, Abbasi believed he would soon have Netflix, or one of the prominent indie studios, knocking on his door.
But though “The Apprentice” drew interest from the usual suspects, there were no offers — not even a lowball one. The film, which depicts Trump getting liposuction, abusing amphetamines, running his casino into the ground and raping his first wife, Ivana, was simply too hot to handle. With Trump locked in a tight race for the White House, major studios, indie labels and streamers, or at least their corporate parents, couldn’t risk alienating the once and possibly future king.
“I get it,” Abbasi says. “This guy can become the next president, and he will have all these tools at his disposal, which he’s shown a willingness to use. So he can come after you with all these regulations and taxes.” he adds, “But it still upsets me.”
Abbasi’s experience says a lot about the anxiety gripping the entertainment world as it watches a tumultuous, enormously consequential election unfold. From corporate suites to studio lots, Hollywood is bracing for a possible Trump return, one that could bring chaos and deepen political divisions in a polarized country.
“There’s a lot of nervousness,” says Schuyler M. Moore, a partner at Greenberg Glusker, who practices entertainment, corporate and tax law. “They don’t know exactly what he would do if he got back in power.”
The actors, writers and directors who make most of what Hollywood exports are overwhelmingly supportive of Kamala Harris and view Trump as an existential threat to their freedoms. They speak at rallies for the Democratic nominee, host fundraisers and make personal contributions. And they’re terrified about what Trump would mean for everything from abortion access to environmental protections — to say nothing of the frontal assault on the rule of law he seems hell-bent on waging. “Everything’s at stake,” says Sarah Paulson, the Emmy- and Tony-winning actress and a Harris supporter. “Democracy is on the ballot.”
But the people who sign Paulson and other artists’ checks have complicated loyalties — they seem more worried about making money than maintaining democratic norms. For them, a second Trump term would mean lower taxes and less antitrust enforcement, a key attraction for a debt-ridden industry looking to consolidate. They are banking on Trump behaving like a generic Republican by embracing a pro-business agenda. But Trump has been less interested in ideology and more attracted to a politics of personal grievance, one that rewards sycophants and punishes critics.
Trump’s erratic behavior in his first term made it difficult for companies to figure out how to navigate his administration without offending him. Despite that challenge, his policies were often good for corporate bottom lines. In 2017, Trump signed a massive tax cut, lowering corporate rates from 35% to 21%. The bill included benefits that were especially helpful to Hollywood, including a lowered rate on overseas income and the ability to immediately write off the full cost of film and TV productions. Disney and Comcast each saved more than $6 billion in the following four years, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
If elected to a second term, Trump has vowed to cut the corporate rate even further — to 15% for companies that make their products in the U.S. Harris, in contrast, wants to hike the rate to 28% and increase the tax on overseas income.
Regardless of who wins, the Motion Picture Association, which represents seven Hollywood studios, is already seeking to influence the next tax law. In a Sept. 25 letter, the lobbying group urged Congress to preserve the benefits of the Trump tax cut, arguing that it “led to a profound increase in film and television production and ownership in the U.S.”
On the other hand, Trump has targeted companies that own news operations, sometimes in performative ways, but sometimes with genuine consequences. In the last month, he has threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of CBS and Disney’s ABC over their coverage, and he is currently suing ABC. He has threatened to investigate Comcast for “treason” over NBC’s coverage of the Russia scandal. And in 2017, his Justice Department sued to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner, which some saw as retaliation against CNN for its coverage of his campaign and presidency. Looking ahead, Trump has pledged to use his office to prosecute opponents. Since many media conglomerates operate news divisions and produce late-night shows that investigate, criticize or lampoon Trump, that could make them a legal and political target for a president obsessed with personal retribution.
“I could see him asking Republicans to pass a law saying anything anti-government is treasonous,” says Moore. “And I could also see him trying to upend current defamation law, so it becomes much easier to go after people. That could have a chilling effect on free speech.”
Moore faults companies for being too enamored of the tax cuts that Trump is proposing and insufficiently fearful of his authoritarian impulses. “He’s not kidding around,” he says. “I’m not sure how great it would be for them to live in a country without a functional democracy.”
Those darker predictions may not come to pass, but whoever wins the Oval Office will have to deal with a media industry that’s desperate to keep merging. And since the next president’s administration will be tasked with enforcing antitrust law, that will give either Trump or Harris enormous power over Hollywood’s future. The Biden administration has antagonized Wall Street by appointing enforcers — Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter, anti-trust division chief at the Justice Department — who have targeted corporate power, especially in tech. Critics argue that has had a chilling effect.
“They created an environment that made dealmaking more difficult,” says Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair. “They’ve scared away deals.” It’s not obvious which administration would be better for companies. Kovacic assumes that Trump would back off on the Biden approach, though he adds, “if you’re a company he hates, he’s not beyond revenge.”
Harris, meanwhile, sued several companies on antitrust grounds when she was California attorney general. But she was reluctant to take big swings at the tech industry, according to a memoir by Kathleen Foote, the longtime chief of the AG’s antitrust section. Kovacic says Harris might go a little easier than Biden, but in a subtle way, so as not to rile her left flank. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren recently urged the Justice Department to scrutinize Venu, the new sports streaming venture from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, saying it would raise subscription prices across the industry. If Harris is elected, Sanders and Warren are likely to keep up the pressure on her administration on that and similar issues.
Warner Bros. Discovery is struggling under a massive debt load, and another merger may be its only means of survival. At the Allen & Co. conference in July, CEO David Zaslav didn’t endorse a candidate, but said he hoped the next administration will see the benefits of consolidation. “We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to, to be even better,” he said.
The Hollywood unions have supported the Biden approach, arguing that media consolidation suppresses wages and results in layoffs. “The Biden administration has been the most pro-labor administration we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” says Matthew Loeb, the president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents 65,000 Hollywood workers and has endorsed Harris. “It was an easy call for us,” Loeb says.
Entertainment companies also face the risk of an all-out trade war. Hollywood is an export business, but many studios belong to companies such as Sony and Apple that also import electronics and other goods to the U.S. Trump has promised a 10% tariff on all imports and a 60% tariff on goods coming from China. That would unleash “chaos” in a global marketplace, says Ed Brzytwa, the VP of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association. “All the agreements, rules and norms will start to unravel,” he says.
Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018, most of which Biden retained. They amounted to a $32 billion levy on electronic goods through 2021, according to Brzytwa’s group. The Consumer Technology Association — whose members include Sony, Disney, Amazon and Comcast — argues that the tariffs failed to revive U.S. manufacturing, but did push production to other Asian countries, like Vietnam and Taiwan. In 2022, Sony Electronics moved much of its camera production to Thailand.
Harris would likely maintain the Biden approach, using targeted tariffs more aggressively than under previous Democratic administrations. Trump’s overall tariff rates would be seven times higher than the current level, according to the Tax Foundation. If he follows through, prices would rise, and the resulting drop in demand, for many companies, would outweigh any gains from lower tax rates, Brzytwa says. “I think there is a lot of interest in the corporate world in preserving what was accomplished in the [Trump tax bill],” he says. “But they don’t want a situation where the U.S. is a fortress and is closed off from the world.”
Brzytwa warns that other countries would likely retaliate, making life more difficult for exporters — even entertainment producers. Media giants shoot all over the world, taking advantage of foreign subsidies. They employ creative talent overseas, and release movies and television shows to vast international regions, where they hope to drive future growth. Trump’s protectionist policies could disrupt that. They would threaten to reframe America’s role in the global economy, straining alliances and fracturing trade partnerships. The consequences of those actions would be felt in almost every sector of the economy.
“You have someone in Trump with the potential to blow it all up,” says Tina Fordham, the founder of Fordham Global Foresight and an expert on geopolitical risk. “If the rules of the game and international norms aren’t respected, then the U.S. will no longer be treated as a reliable global trading partner. That means all the advantages that America has enjoyed in the post-World War II era could erode. I’m not sure people appreciate how destabilizing this could be.”
Some of that impact is already being felt. A decade ago, Hollywood was still focused on opening the Chinese market to American films. But that initiative faded away as the relationship soured. “That ship has sailed,” says Greg Frazier, who worked on the issue while at the MPA. “Whether it’s Harris or Trump, I don’t see any great opening in China, on either side.”
As for “The Apprentice,” after months in limbo, the producers finally signed a deal with Briarcliff Entertainment, a tiny distribution company that has handled politically charged fare such as “The Dissident,” a 2020 documentary about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi that also scared off major media outlets.
“It was such a relief to get into theaters,” Abbasi says. “I spent the summer clinically depressed and thinking, ‘We did all this work, and nobody is ever going to see our film.’”
Instead, “The Apprentice” opened in theaters on Oct. 11, a month before a presidential election that could return Trump to the pinnacle of power. Abbasi is glad that someone had the courage to release his movie, but he won’t forget the fear he encountered while trying to get “The Apprentice” in front of audiences.
“The big story for me is how one human being is intimidating the 300 million or so people who live in America,” Abbasi says. “How can an entire country let that happen?”
Jack Dunn contributed to this report.