First lady Melania Trump’s documentary “Melania” has exceeded box office expectations, with estimates on Sunday predicting it will gross $7.04 million in its opening weekend.
The documentary finished in third place overall over the weekend, behind Sam Raimi’s thriller “Send Help” ($20 million) and YouTuber Mark Fischbacher’s (better known as Mark Plier) video game adaptation “Iron Lung” ($17.8 million).
Amazon reportedly paid $40 million to acquire “Melania” and is spending $35 million on advertising. As such, even if the documentary beats pre-release expectations for a weekend opening of $3 million to $5 million, it is unlikely to make a profit in theaters.
Amazon’s bid was $26 million more than the next highest bidder, Disney, and critics have suggested the deal may have more to do with gaining support from the Trump administration than the film’s box office potential. Ted Hope, a veteran film executive who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020, told the New York Times that the film “has to be the most expensive documentary ever made without music licensing.”
“There’s no way that wouldn’t equate to favoritism or outright bribery,” Hope said. “Why doesn’t that happen?”
The film will be the first film directed by Brett Ratner since 2017, when he was accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by multiple women. (Ratner denies those accusations.) Rolling Stone reports that two-thirds of Melania’s New York staff did not want to be officially credited on the film.
Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a screening of “Melania” at the White House over the weekend, but “Melania” was not shown to critics in advance and received poor reviews afterward. The documentary currently has an “overwhelmingly negative” rating of 7% on review aggregation site Metacritic and 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis called the film a “very limited and carefully stage-managed chronicle of Mrs. Trump’s daily life” during the 20 days leading up to Trump’s inauguration as president in 2025.
Kevin Wilson, head of domestic theatrical distribution at Amazon MGM, said in a statement that this weekend is “an important first step in what we see as a long tail of lifecycles for both movies and upcoming documentary series,” predicting that this weekend will have “significant longevity” on Amazon’s Prime streaming service.
