The controversial filmmaker, who previewed footage on '
The Late Show with
Stephen Colbert,' is teaming up with film exec Tom Ortenberg, to distribute 'Fahrenheit 11/9.'
Michael Moore announced the release date of and showed off footage from his upcoming documentary focused on President
Donald Trump during his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Thursday night.
The Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker revealed that the documentary will released Sept. 21 and confirmed that its title will be Fahrenheit 11/9, echoing that of his earlier 2004 film that took aim at President George W. Bush.
Veteran film exec Tom Ortenberg, who stepped down as CEO of Open Road Films last November, is in the process of launching a new company, Briarcliff Entertainment, and is partnering with Moore to release Fahrenheit 11/9 as a prelaunch project. Distributing the new film together will mark a reteaming for Moore and Ortenberg, since Ortenberg was at Lionsgate when that company released Fahrenheit 9/11, which remains the highest grossing doc of all time with $222 million in worldwide grosses, as well as one of Moore's subsequent films, Sicko.
Though the director said that he "can't reveal too much right now" about the documentary, he showed footage in which he attempts to gain entry into Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, or as he told someone as he attempted to enter, the "Southern White House." He is shown being kept out by an iron gate at a door as the camera zooms in to see who is inside. "Just tell him it's me," Moore is heard saying to a doorman.
The footage echoed his 1989 documentary, Roger & Me, which established the director's reputation, with its scenes in which he visited General Motors headquarters in an attempt to meet its CEO Roger B. Smith.
According to an official synopsis of the new film, "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a provocative and comedic look at the times in which we live. It will explore the two most important questions of the Trump Era: How the f**k did we get here, and how the f**k do we get out? It's the film to see before it's too late."
Moore told Colbert the film is about: “How the hell we got in this situation, and how we’re going to get out of it."
After the footage aired, Colbert asked Moore what he thought about calls for "civility" following an occasion in which Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was booted from the Red Hen restaurant because, she said, she worked for Trump. Moore said "Our side is constantly giving in," and said that Democrats have to resist but be "non-violent." He added, however, "We're not talking about political differences, we're talking about thousands of children being separated from their parents and put in jails ... This is insanity, it is not who we are, is it?" he asked, to cheers from the audience.
When asked if he has any hope for political change, rather than just confrontation, Moore admitted that he cries every day while reading the news. After adding, "the only way we're going to stop this is that we're going to have to put our bodies on the line," he said that the reason he makes films is that he "thinks there is a chance."
In another hint of what may await Trump in the documentary, last month the filmmaker teased a warning to both the president and comedian Roseanne Barr, tweeting a vintage clip from a 1998 episode of Barr's syndicated talk show, The Roseanne Show, in which Moore appeared with them both. In the clip, Trump congratulated Moore on his film, Roger & Me, also jokingly saying, “I hope you never do one on me.”
"I know Roseanne. And I know Trump. And they are about to rue the day they knew me …," Moore warned. The tweet followed a prior post in which Moore wrote, "So @therealroseanne woke up this morning & posted hateful, slanderous tweets about me, Valerie Jarrett, George Soros & Chelsea Clinton — and ABC fired her. If only NBC had fired Trump when he started his racist birther movement in 2011, he wouldn't be in the White House today."
Moore announced last year that he was planning on creating a documentary centered on Trump and his presidency titled, Fahrenheit 11/9. The new documentary refers to the date Trump effectively became the president-elect in 2016.
That film was officially announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, when Harvey and Bob Weinstein said they had personally bought worldwide rights under their Fellowship Adventure Group as they pitched the film to potential distributors. While it was originally slated for a potential summer 2017 release, Moore turned his focus instead to his Broadway show, The Terms of My Surrender, which had a 12-week run.
But according to sources with knowledge of the project, this new Fahrenheit 11/9 has no connection to the earlier announced project or the Weinsteins.