Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind this awards season’s buzziest movies continues with The Apprentice, the Ali Abbasi-directed drama about the formative years of Donald Trump based on the feature-screenwriting debut of journalist Gabriel Sherman.

Sebastian Stan plays Trump beginning in the 1970s when he was a young New York real estate developer, while Jeremy Strong plays his mentor, the lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, who teaches his protégé how to obtain power and wealth using deception, intimidation and media manipulation. Their relationship provides the anchor for the film, an origin story of sorts as Trump begins his rise. Maria Bakalova plays Trump’s first wife Ivana.

The film, Abbasi’s English-language debut, had a splashy world premiere at May’s Cannes Film Festival — a splash noted by Team Trump, which wanted to...