Amid speculative reports that Donald Trump Jr is being considered by Amazon to lead a reboot of The Apprentice, he’s already received a slightly muted endorsement from the reality show’s former host: his father.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Amazon was considering rebooting The Apprentice, which was hosted by the now US president Donald Trump between 2004 and 2015, for its streaming service Prime Video.
The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources who said Amazon MGM Studios head Mike Hopkins “began talking about the reboot idea internally early last year, around the time Trump was being sworn in for his second term, according to some of the people familiar with the talks”.
Amazon said in a statement that a reboot was “not in active development”, but confirmed to Variety that “preliminary internal discussions about what’s next for The Apprentice” had begun since the media company acquired MGM, and with it The Apprentice franchise, in 2022.
“Any reporting on details of the show or names of potential hosts would be purely speculative,” Amazon said.
On Thursday, the Hollywood Reporter cited a source close to Trump Jr, who said he had learned about his potential new role from the media.
But at an Oval Office executive order signing event on Thursday, Trump was asked about the reports.
“Well, I’ve been hearing it,” Trump said. “So we’ll see what happens. He’s good. He’s a good guy. He’s probably good. He’s got a little charisma going.”
If Amazon reboots The Apprentice with a Trump at the helm, it would be a sign that the company is determined to cement a relationship with the family after it released Melania, Brett Ratner’s critically panned documentary about the first lady. Amazon paid $40m for the rights to the film – plus an as-yet unaired docu series – $26m higher than the offer from the second highest bidder, Disney. Amazon spent a further $35m on marketing Melania, which made just $16m at the box office – leading some questioning whether Amazon’s eye-watering $75m spend was really the price of ingratiating itself with Trump.
Starting in 2004, The Apprentice saw business contestants compete in tasks such as selling products and negotiating deals, with the ultimate prize being a job within Trump’s business empire. Each episode saw Trump grill the players before delivering his catchphrase: “You’re fired!”
The Apprentice was hugely successful and spawned several spin-offs in the US and internationally. Trump hosted the show until 2015 when he left to run for office, but remained involved as an executive producer. Arnold Schwarzenegger then became host of The New Celebrity Apprentice in 2017, but left after one season as Trump repeatedly criticised him on social media.
“With Trump being involved in the show people have a bad taste and don’t want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show,” Schwarzenegger told Empire in 2017. “It’s a very divisive period now and I think this show got caught up in all that division.”
Trump responded by claiming Schwarzenegger “was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show.”
Two years ago, Trump revealed he had already endorsed one of his children to be his successor on The Apprentice – but it wasn’t Trump Jr.
“I said, ‘The best person to hire would be Ivanka Trump,’” Trump told Ramin Setoodeh, in an interview for his book Apprentice in Wonderland. “I didn’t press it. But I felt Ivanka would have been by far the best person you could hire.”