“You’re hired,” but reportedly only if you’re related to Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Amazon was considering rebooting The Apprentice, but instead of the original host, now President Trump, or his one-season replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the big cheese this time would be Donald Trump Jr.
But the paper reports discussion of a reboot is still in initial stages, so much so that the company has not yet approached the Trump family. If it gets the greenlight, though, the show would run on Amazon’s Prime Video service, like the documentary film it produced about another Trump, Melania.
Amazon acquired previous seasons of The Apprentice when it acquired MGM in 2022. “Since our acquisition of MGM, we have had preliminary internal discussions about what’s next for The Apprentice as a property,” an Amazon spokesperson told Variety. “The show is not in active development, and any reporting on details of the show or names of potential hosts would be purely speculative.”
Reps for Amazon, the White House, Donald Trump Jr., and Apprentice producer Mark Burnett did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
The competition series premiered in 2004 with the elder Trump ostensibly looking to hire someone to work at his companies, drawing from a pool of candidates by putting them to work with tasks like marketing and branding. When eliminating candidates, Trump would say, “You’re fired.” Omarosa Manigault Newman became the series’ first breakout star in the first season, though she did not win; Trump later hired her in 2017 as an assistant o him and the Office of Public Liaison’s director of communications at the White House but she was fired before the year was up. Trump hosted 14 seasons of the show, which eventually opened the pool to celebrities. Schwarzenegger hosted the 15th, which ran concurrent with Trump’s first month as president in 2017.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon execs began internal discussions about an Apprentice reboot in 2025, around when Trump began his second term as president. This was around the same time it paid $40 million to distribute Melania, 70 percent of which went to the First Lady herself. Amazon contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, according to the paper.
Although Amazon founder Jeff Bezos retired in 2021, he remains the company’s executive chairman. He has since fostered a closer relationship with Trump, even attending a dinner with the president and King Charles III this week.
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