Is Prime Video rebooting The Apprentice?
Amazon’s Head of Unscripted and Documentary Television Jenn Levy remained quite coy while answering this question at Deadline’s Reality TV Summit on Friday, opting only to confirm that the series “is not in active development” at the moment.
Apprentice revival talk began thanks to a Wall Street Journal report late Wednesday. Per the report, executives at the streamer have been toying with the idea of bringing the series back with Donald Trump Jr. as host, but it quickly became clear that these discussions were in the early stages after Don Jr. said he learned about it from the press.
During a press conference Thursday, President Donald Trump weighed in on whether he’d like to see his son revive the competition series he hosted for 14 seasons.
“He’d be probably good,” Trump said. “He’s got a little charisma going. You need a little charisma for that sucker.”
“Yeah, they told me about it, we’ll see,” the elder Trump concluded about a possible new life for the now-MGM TV-owned property created in 2004 by Mark Burnett.
While news of a new Apprentice seemed to catch almost everyone outside the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ by surprise, sources close to Amazon have cautioned about reading too much into any return to the boardroom any time soon. Levy’s public comments Friday only reaffirmed what a spokesperson told Deadline earlier this week.
“Since our acquisition of MGM, we have had preliminary internal discussions about what’s next for The Apprentice as a property,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “The show is not in active development, and any reporting on details of the show or names of potential hosts would be purely speculative.”
That said, just because the reboot isn’t currently in active development doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Never say never.
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