“I think it’s time to make movies relevant,” said Ali Abbasi to the cheering crowd at the May 20 Cannes premiere of his Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice. “It’s time to make movies political again.”

Hollywood doesn’t seem to be listening. Despite the enthusiastic response to The Apprentice internationally — the film, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and Succession’s Jeremy Strong as his master-of-the-dark-arts political mentor Roy Cohn, has been sold in nearly every territory — the movie is still struggling to land a U.S. distributor. That’s despite, as Abbasi calls it, this fall’s “promotional event, the U.S. election,” that would seem to provide an ideal launchpad, and plenty of free publicity, for any domestic distributor.

A U.S. deal for The Apprentice is complicated by the fact that Kinematics, the company backed by pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, put up equity for the film against…