Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has reportedly beaten box office expectations and recorded the strongest start of any documentary in over a decade, taking $7m at the US box office during its lavishly-promoted opening weekend. But it also cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.
And Amazon – which recently cut 16,000 corporate jobs – has been hit with criticism that making the documentary about the first lady, and paying so highly for it, was little more than a ploy to curry favor with her husband, Donald Trump, during his second presidency.
The film, which follows Melania Trump as she prepared to re-enter the White House in early 2025, was beaten at the box office by two horror films: Iron Lung and Rachel McAdams’s Send Help. But it managed to beat out action film Shelter.
Melania registered its earnings by targeting older conservatives and has been noted for carefully playing to subjects close to what are said to be interests of her husband’s fans: patriotism, Christianity and the importance of family.
Deadline said Melania was forecast to make $5m on its debut weekend. The Hollywood Reporter said that those predictions for the Brett Ratner-directed documentary were “based on empty, or nearly empty, seat maps in cinemas across the country”.
The outlet estimated that the film had done well with conservatives in the southern US, specifically women over the age of 55, who made up 72% of the opening-day audience.
EntTelligence, a research firm, estimated that rural theaters would contribute roughly 46% of the opening-weekend box office – and those in Republican counties would contribute about 53% of ticket sales. Top box office states for the film included the conservative stalwart states of Florida and Texas.
A statement from the head of Amazon MGM Studios’ domestic theatrical distribution, Kevin Wilson, said the company was “very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response” and reiterated the early box office results had exceeded expectations.
Referred to a planned follow-up documentary series about the first lady, Wilson’s statement also said: “This momentum is an important first step in what we see as a long-tail lifecycle for both the film and the forthcoming docu-series, extending well beyond the theatrical window and into what we believe will be a significant run for both on our service.”
Amazon says it operates on a different economic system to a traditional film studio, offsetting the costs of a theatrical release and promotion for distribution to 200 million subscribers to its Prime Video service.
Melania, though, has received overwhelmingly negative critical reviews. The Guardian judged it to be “dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing”.
“There is a decent documentary to be made about the former model from Slovenia, but this one is unredeemable,” the Guardian’s one-star review said.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter described it as an “expensive propaganda doc” and “a film that fawns so lavishly over its subject that you feel downright unpatriotic not gushing over it”. In trailing credits, it added, the first lady’s achievements are rolled “in such laudatory fashion that North Korea would blush”.
Donald Trump recently told reporters he “wasn’t involved” in negotiations over the documentary $75m price tag. Melania Trump said the producers had approached several distributors, and “Amazon was the best because they agreed to do theaters all around the world.”
Ratner, the director – who had otherwise largely retreated from Hollywood after numerous sexual misconduct allegations during the #MeToo movement – was pointedly asked at the Melania premiere if he felt he was part of a larger quid pro quo.
“That’s ridiculous, but it’s OK, I’ll answer,” he said. “I can tell you right now, if we were audited and they said, ‘How much was spent on this movie?’ This movie is one of the most expensive movies – documentaries – in the genre ever made.”
“It wasn’t about getting rich. I mean, I think the Trumps are wealthy and successful enough. This is about giving me the ability to hire the best crew in the world, to not only score the film with the best composer … I mean, when you see the movie, you’ll go, ‘Oh, we see where the money went now.’ This wasn’t about corruption. Melania only cared about one thing – making a great movie for audiences.”
On the same day Melania opened in theaters, Ratner appeared in photos published by Trump’s justice department as part of a release of 3m files pertaining to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The photos show Ratner in pictures alongside Epstein, including while wrapping his arms around a woman between them.
Ratner has not publicly commented.
People mentioned in or seen in pictures included in the so-called Epstein files have not been implicated in or convicted of crimes. Many notable people who associated with Epstein, a former friend of Trump, have denied wrongdoing.
