President Donald Trump was apparently persuaded not to enter the movie business by Tim Allen. According to the Shifting Gears actor, he was the one responsible for convincing Trump, when he was still the host of The Apprentice, to drop his Hollywood dreams by sharing how much it really costs to put a movie production together.
Tim Allen says he persuaded Trump to stay away from Hollywood
The Home Improvement star, 72, was a guest on Bill Maher’s podcast Club Random where he shared a story on how he turned Donald Trump away from the movie business during a discussion over dinner.
Allen explained, “I think it was the second-to-last year of The Apprentice. And he was thinking of moving to Los Angeles and being a movie producer, and he was talking about about movies. He said, ‘I really like the film business.'”
Seeing that Trump wanted to continue his success from The Apprentice and asked him to start a studio together, the actor promptly discouraged him, revealing the many financial risks of investing in a movie.
“He said, so if we got a studio together, let’s say the movie cost a million-six, a million-twenty. And I said, you gotta double that, at least for the promotion…,” Allen recalled. “He goes, ‘What if the ticket sales are slow?’ You lose. And he goes, ‘But you gotta make up the loss somehow. How do you make up the loss?’ I said, ‘Well, there’ll be some tax benefit, but you lose the money. That’s how come the studios struggle. They are looking for winners. You amortize your loss with losers over winners.”
Trump then realized a dark truth about movie production then and there. The actor continued, “He says, ‘If I buy a bad building, and it won’t sell, I still have the f***ing building. If you have a s***ty movie… No, this is not an easy business.”
In 2025, Tim Allen shared that he decided to forgive his father’s killer after hearing a speech Erica Kirk gave about her husband’s death.
