‘Melania’ marks the first feature from Brett Ratner since 2014. The director was publicly accused of sexual harassment and assault by six women in 2017.Amazon MGM Studios/Amazon Prime
This past Saturday night, while the United States and the rest of the world were reeling from the killing of a Minneapolis nurse by federal Border Patrol agents – the victim, Alex Pretti, was shot multiple times while being restrained, face-first, on the ground during a civilian demonstration – U.S. President Donald Trump and a coterie of VIPs from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street gathered at the White House to munch on popcorn served by gloved waiters, enjoy the music of a full military band, and watch an exclusive sneak preview of the season’s most buzzed about new movie: Melania.
Directed by Brett Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour films and the very worst X-Men movie, the documentary follows 20 days in the life of the First Lady in the lead-up to her husband’s 2025 inauguration. Given that the film has not been screened for critics ahead of its release in North American theatres this weekend, it is impossible as of this writing to know the cinematic merits or deficits of Melania.
So let’s talk about what we do know.
For starters, we know that the film marks the first feature from Ratner since his 2014 adventure Hercules – a decade-plus absence from the big screen that makes sense once you learn that the director was publicly accused of sexual harassment and assault by six women in 2017. None of the allegations has been proven in court, but the ugly headlines – including a Los Angeles Times story in which the actor Natasha Henstridge said that Ratner allegedly forced her to perform oral sex on him when she was 19 – were enough to keep the director far away from Hollywood.
Until, that is, the director, whose showbiz orbit was once populated by such MAGA-friendly figures as Steven Mnuchin (Trump’s one-time Treasury Secretary) and Marc Beckman (Melania’s current agent and “senior adviser”), became close with the Trumps.
Amazon MGM Studios acquired the ‘Melania’ project for roughly US$40-million.Regine Mahaux/Amazon Prime
Since filming on Melania wrapped, the filmmaker-subject bond has become so strong that Trump personally requested that Paramount Skydance – the movie studio recently purchased by the Ellison family, whose patriarch Larry is a long-time supporter of the President – revive Ratner’s long-dormant Rush Hour franchise for a fourth instalment. (The project is now in pre-production.)
What else do we know about Ratner’s new documentary? We know that Amazon MGM Studios acquired the project for roughly US$40-million, an eye-watering figure that represents the single biggest cheque that the studio has ever cut for a documentary. (It was also, according to The Wall Street Journal, nearly three times the price of the next-closest offer for the film’s rights, which came from rival studio Disney.)
We also know that about two weeks before the studio sealed that unprecedented deal, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, whose myriad business interests can generously be said to depend on the whims of the commander-in-chief, dined with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago, where the project, at that point still up for grabs, was discussed.
Make of that timing what you will – just as you can infer whatever you like from the WSJ report about how Melania kept roughly 70 per cent of that US$40-million licensing fee for herself. Melania is also, it should be noted, an executive producer on the film. Melania, by Melania, for Melania.
So: Will Ratner’s film be a warts-and-all chronicle of the First Lady? Or will it perhaps be a soft-focus, sympathetic portrait of a woman who has seemingly gone out of her way to avoid contributing anything of cultural or political significance to a nation that is currently being ransacked and terrorized by her husband? Who can say, really.
Just as we’ll have to imagine, for now, what Amazon’s Bezos could otherwise have spent that US$40-million – plus US$35-million in marketing and distribution costs – on other than Melania. I suppose he could have put some of that cash toward The Washington Post, the newspaper that he owns and which is set to cut up to 300 employees in the immediate future. Who needs foreign correspondents or sports journalists when you have filmmakers like Ratner, right? The same logic could also be applied to the 16,000 employees that Amazon laid off this week from its retail, web-services, human-resources, and Prime Video departments. More time, I suppose, for those former employees to see Melania. Ideally twice.
We do know, though, that Amazon is not the only Hollywood power player to align itself with the Trump administration. Ever since the world’s biggest fan of the “51st state” has taken office, we have seen various studios embark on what could generously be called a campaign to curry the favour of you-know-who.
‘Melania’ makes its official premiere Thursday night at Washington’s Kennedy Center.Regine Mahaux/Amazon Prime
Media empires have dropped diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, quashed storylines deemed excessively progressive, overhauled entire news divisions, gagged late-night television comedians, paid US$16-million to settle a Trump-issued lawsuit, and pledged to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn. You know, normal things that happen in any healthy democracy.
Speaking of which, we also know who was in attendance for that special White House screening of Melania this past weekend. You know, the one that occurred just a few hours after social-media accounts across the world were flooded with raw footage of Pretti, a registered nurse with no criminal record, being shot to death by federal agents on the street. Those miraculously able – and willing – to smile for the camera that evening included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon MGM Studios head Mike Hopkins, New York Stock Exchange president Lynn Martin, and, of course, Ratner, mugging for the camera harder than Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan during Rush Hour 3.
While reactions to Melania have been slow to trickle out of the D.C. screening, expect word-of-mouth to travel more quickly once the film makes its official premiere Thursday night at the Kennedy Center. (Sorry, I meant to say the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”) But many of the White House’s esteemed guests did leave last Saturday’s screening clutching armfuls of exclusive Melania merch, including framed tickets, monochrome cookies emblazoned with the word “Melania,” limited-edition copies of the First Lady’s 2024 memoir, and with absolutely nothing at all to say about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The more you know, the better.