“Melania,” a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, is exceeding box office expectationswith Sunday estimates suggesting it will make $7.04 million in its opening weekend.
The documentary comes in third overall for the weekend, behind the Sam Raimi-directed thriller “Send Help” ($20 million) and “Iron Lung” ($17.8 million), a video game adaptation from YouTuber Mark Fischbach (better known as Markiplier).
Amazon paid $40 million to acquire “Melania” and is reportedly spending $35 million to promote it. So even though the documentary is beating pre-release estimates of a $3 million to $5 million opening weekend, it’s unlikely to turn a profit in theaters.
Amazon’s bid reached $26 million ahead of the next highest bidder, Disney, prompting critics to argue that the deal had less to do with the film’s box office potential and more to do with defeating the Trump administration. Veteran film director Ted Hope, who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020, he told the New York Times that the film “must be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing”.
“How can it not be equated with favor or a pure bribe?” Hope said. “How could it not be?”
This is Brett Ratner’s first film to direct since 2017, when many women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct. (Ratner has denied these accusations.) Rolling Stone reports that Two-thirds of the “Melania” crew in New York asked not to be officially credited in the movie.
While Apple CEO Tim Cook watch a preview screening of “Melania” at the White House last weekend, “Melania” was not screened in advance for critics, and the subsequent reviews were brutal. The documentary right now it sits at 7% on review aggregator Metacriticindicating “overwhelming dislike” and at 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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New York Times film critic It was described by Manohla Dargis as “a very limited and carefully curated chronicle of Mrs. Trump’s daily life” in the 20 days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration in 2025.
In a statement, Amazon MGM’s head of domestic theatrical distribution, Kevin Wilson, described this weekend as “an important first step in what we see as a long life cycle for both the film and the upcoming documentary series,” which he predicted will have a “significant life” on Amazon’s Prime streaming service.
