Trump skewered in Funny or Die film

NEW YORK — In one of the more elaborate and unexpected spoofs of Donald Trump, Johnny Depp has joined the ranks of the combed-over, starring in a mock documentary released the morning after the GOP candidate’s primary victory in New Hampshire.

The comedy website Funny or Die on Wednesday unveiled “Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie,” a 50-minute video styled as Trump’s own self-made TV movie adaptation of his 1987 best-selling advice book.

The film, shot clandestinely, stars Depp as Trump in a startling transformation for even the actor known for outlandish metamorphoses, like the Mad Hatter and Whitey Bulger. After Owen Burke, Funny or Die’s editor in chief, came up with the concept, the site’s co-founder Adam McKay (and director of the Oscar-nominated “The Big Short”) called Depp and ran the idea by him.

“I pitched it to Johnny right there,” Burke said. “The fact that Johnny said yes, we were just so excited. We couldn’t believe it.”

Along with Depp’s leading performance, the movie is narrated by Ron Howard (who claims the film was discovered after “the Cybill Shepherd blouse fire of 1989”), features a theme song from Kenny Loggins and includes a cast of Alfred Molina, Jack McBrayer, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Merchant, Henry Winkler and Andy Richter.

“We wanted to make it ’80s cheesy, but we knew he would have the classiest of the ’80s graphic packages,” Burke said. “It couldn’t look that good, but it couldn’t look cheap.”

Written by Joe Randazzo, the former editor of The Onion, and directed by “Drunk History” co-creator Jeremy Konner, the film, Burke said, is about Trump “as this strange product of American celebrity worship and entrepreneurship.”