Thursday night in Washington saw the world premiere of Melania, Brett Ratner’s $40m film about the first lady and one of the most expensive documentaries ever made. At the lately renamed Donald J Trump and John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, guests including House speaker Mike Johnson and health secretary Robert F Kennedy waved to reporters from the black carpet (which was paying homage to the first lady’s favourite colour) before making their way up steps emblazoned with her name in glowing monochrome block capitals. Once the film began, unreeling its profile of Melania Trump over the 20 days leading up to her husband’s January 2025 inauguration, press were barred.
Everyone was welcome to attend the UK’s first screening on Friday morning, yet all other tickets to the 9.40am screening at Sittingbourne’s Light cinema’s 34-seater screen three remained unsold – until I bought one. Ten minutes before it began, doors to the multiplex were still locked and only gulls were patrolling the puddles outside the entrance. Screenings this early were unusual, an usher confirmed, “usually it’s just kids films”.
Twelve showings are scheduled over the film’s week-long run, for which a total of six seats have so far been sold. By contrast, 59 seats have already been snapped up for the first-day screenings of Wuthering Heights in a fortnight, and 33 for Being Victoria Wood next Tuesday.
This picture is mimicked across the 100 or so cinemas in the UK in which Melania is being released, as well as in most of the 1,500 cinemas in the US screening the film, and the some 3,000 other cinemas around the world.
Speaking on Thursday night, Melania said that it was Amazon’s commitment to a wide theatrical rollout for the film that convinced her to choose them over the likes of Disney and Paramount, which also bid for the rights. “Amazon was the best because they agreed to do theatres all around the world,” she said.
Ratner, who has not made a movie since 2014’s Hercules after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were brought against him in 2017 (which he denies and with which he has not been charged), was also eager to champion the streamer’s commitment to cinemas. “To me, it’s already a success,” he said, “just the fact that Amazon has agreed to distribute this theatrically. It’s a different world today. When I was a kid, all I cared about was box office. ‘How much money is this movie going to make?’ And now it’s like I’ve already succeeded. I’ve grown up a little bit.”
The film is tracking to make between $3-5m in the US over its opening weekend, but ticket sales in the 25 other territories where it will be seen this weekend are much softer. The exception is Melania’s native Slovenia, where almost all seats for Friday evening’s screening in the capital of Ljubljana are sold out.
Films generally require around two-and-a-half times their production budget in global theatrical revenue to break even. This means Melania needs to make $100m to recoup costs. For comparison, that number has recently been achieved by Marty Supreme, the Timothée Chalamet film up for nine Oscars, and which has become A24’s highest-grossing film ever. Other hits currently in cinemas – such as Hamnet and 28 Years Later: Bone Temple – are both on around $42m.
“Everything about the numbers reported for Melania is surreal and certainly unprecedented,” says Steven Gaydos, a veteran entertainment journalist and former vice president and executive editor of Variety. “A documentary based upon a subject of such little popular interest expending such astounding sums and going into theatres where it will vaporise instantly like spit on a griddle. Its cost is so out of proportion to the audience for this project.”
The film’s wide rollout (documentaries in the UK cap their release at about 25 locations), as well as dauntingly early or late start times have given rise to suspicions in the industry that distributors Amazon may be paying cinemas to play the film. Amazon did not reply to requests for comment.
This is an uncommon practice known as four-walling, by which the distributor rents the “four walls” of the screen from the owner for a flat fee and keeps all box office coffers, while the cinema gets to keep all popcorn profits. Four-walling is usually the preserve of titles deemed too niche for distributors to risk acquiring, such as documentaries based on home videos, conspiracy theory films and pornography. In 1972, Deep Throat became the only film to leverage the tactic successfully, when it was exclusively – and lucratively – released into privately-rented cinemas.
Were this the case in Sittingbourne, Amazon would be paying about £4,080 over the week and recouping just over £100 (all tickets are £3 this Saturday). Representatives for the Light – a chain of 14 premises with an emphasis on community programming and inclusive events – as well Odeon and Vue have not replied to requests for comment. Amazon previously declared: “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only – because we think customers are going to love it.”
On Thursday, an unverified Craiglist ad offered free tickets to the film this weekend in Boston, plus $50 expenses to those who agree to stay until the final credits. Were this a genuine offer being made by Amazon, and the four-walling strategy verified, it would mean the company is forking out four times for Melania: first for the movie rights, then to ensure cinemas show it, then to make people watch it – and for the tickets themselves.
“These empty theatres and catastrophic box office numbers are going to be a huge embarrassment that must be anticipated,” said Gaydos. “I guess no one involved cares, because it’s impossible for anyone to be surprised.”
While low box office takings outside the US are widely predicted, the scope of the rollout also means that screen average takings are likely to be exposingly low.
Earlier this week, the president wrote on Truth Social that the film was a “must see” and tickets were “selling fast”. Speaking on the black carpet, the first lady – who reportedly paid herself $28m for her involvement, and oversaw much of the film’s promotional push personally – explained the film’s universal appeal. “Everybody will connect on a certain level,” she said. “Teenagers can go to see it, young women can go to see, and be inspired that they could have a family and business, as well.”
On Thursday, the film’s release in South Africa was abruptly cancelled, with a spokesperson for the local distributor citing “recent developments” and “the current climate”. Trump is a largely unpopular figure in the country at present after his comments about a “white genocide” being waged against the Afrikaner population.
In the US, where most of the film’s $35m promotional budget was spent, posters and billboards have been defaced. Meanwhile, Ratner’s Instagram posts about the film have been flooded with comments comparing him to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and passing comment on his his appearance in a photo in the Epstein files. Reads one: “It’s difficult to determine which is the most spineless, shameless, vapid, obtuse, worthless, unrepentant, cretinous [cuss word], Melania or you?”
Speaking at the Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday evening, the director addressed reports that crew members, including at least half of those who worked on the New York sections of the film had requested their names be removed from the credits.
“I understand if a liberal is working on the movie and they don’t want to be credited but they want to feed their family,” he said. “I don’t blame anyone for that.”
A Rolling Stone report cites anonymous sources condemning Ratner’s on-set behaviour, including performative eating while crew members were not provided with food for long days, as well as leaving crew stranded late at night in the wrong state.
“There was more talk about Brett being slimy than there was about Melania,” said one, while another agreed that the first lady “was totally nice. She was the opposite of Brett Ratner.”
Ratner, who divides his time between Israel and a villa on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, is now working on the completion of a spin-off mini series about the first lady, before he turns his attention to the fourth instalment of his moribund Rush Hour action series, which was greenlit by Paramount last year after the president expressed a desire for the franchise to be resurrected.
