Los Angeles, California - Explosive Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice hits movie theaters Friday, with filmmakers gambling that it will draw audiences in a fiercely polarized nation just weeks before its subject's election showdown with rival Kamala Harris.

The hot-topic film about the Republican candidate's younger years has drawn legal threats from Trump's attorneys, not least for deeply unflattering scenes, including a depiction of the former president raping his wife.

None of the major Hollywood studios was willing to risk distributing the polarizing movie, which is instead being released in some 1,700 North American movie theaters this weekend by indie studio Briarcliff Entertainment.

"I think it's interesting that people think this movie is controversial," said director Ali Abbasi at the film's New York premiere this week, which was attended by stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong.

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"Think about it. We're talking about a person who is actually convicted in civil court of sexual assault."

The most talked-about scene in The Apprentice shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana, after she belittles him for growing overweight and bald.

In real life, Ivana accused Trump of raping her during divorce proceedings, but later rescinded the allegation. She died in 2022.

Controversy tends to raise awareness, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, "but whether that translates to people wanting to see it is a whole different thing."

The Apprentice is "not going to be the number one movie at the box office this weekend," he predicted.

But it can still only benefit from the timing, much like the recent successful release of another biopic, Reagan.

"You've got to strike while the iron is hot, and right now political movies are pretty hot."

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Despite the headlines, The Apprentice offers a nuanced view of the young Trump as an ambitious but naive social climber, desperately trying to navigate the cutthroat world of Manhattan property deals and politics.

"I really don't think we've done like a hit job on Donald Trump," Abbasi told AFP at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where he used a press conference to invite Trump to watch the movie before judging it.

On Wednesday, marketers hired a plane to fly a banner over a Trump rally in Pennsylvania which read "TRUMP GO SEE THE APPRENTICE FRIDAY."

Nonetheless, Trump's lawyers have vowed to sue the producers, calling the film "garbage" and "pure malicious defamation."

Its title reflects the name of NBC television show The Apprentice, which brought Trump fame and fortune over 15 seasons beginning in 2004.

Executive producer James Shani told the New York premiere audience the film had been "especially difficult" to release, and praised Briarcliff for being the only distributor with "the balls to get us here."

"I think that says a lot about the time that we're in," he said.