Lake Oswego theater loses rights to screen \u2018Melania\u2019 after marquee jokes<\/p>\n
Published 12:30 pm Monday, February 2, 2026<\/p>\n
Lake Theater & Cafe announced that it will no longer show \u201cMelania,\u201d the Amazon Studios documentary about the first lady, after Amazon revoked the theater\u2019s rights to the film. <\/p>\n
\u201cGot a call that the higher ups (i.e., at Amazon) were upset with how our marquee marketed their movie (i.e., Melania), that, per them, Sunday would be its last day here,\u201dthe Lake Theater & Cafe said in a post on Instagram about the scheduling changes. <\/p>\n
The loss of the theatrical rights is attributed to the Lake Theater\u2019s marquee messages for the documentary. <\/p>\n
These included: \u201cDOES MELANIA WEAR PRADA? FIND OUT FRIDAY!\u201d and \u201cTO DEFEAT YOUR ENEMY. YOU MUST KNOW THEM. MELANIA.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMelania\u201d is directed by Brett Ratner and follows the 20 days before President Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration. Amazon Studios purchased the rights to produce and distribute the film in 2025 for $40 million. <\/p>\n
Even before the rights to \u201cMelania\u201d were revoked, the Lake Theater & Cafe had received emails from the community asking why the film was being shown at all, according to theater General Manager Jordan Perry\u2019s blog post. <\/p>\n
\u201cMostly, I thought doing so would be funny. For some of you, that\u2019s enough. Great! Otherwise\u2026 Financially, the film marketplace this week and next were a desert\u2026 So, to fill a screen, why not get this inexplicable vanity piece from the current president\u2019s wife? I mean, it just seems so weird that it even exists (who wants a movie about Melania lol?), and wouldn\u2019t it then be exponentially weirder, to the point of being funny, to show it here, at your obviously anti-establishment, occasionally troublemaking, neighborhood cinema?\u201d Perry wrote. <\/p>\n
Perry goes on to explain how showing Melania doesn\u2019t financially benefit the president\u2019s family as Amazon Studios is owned by Jeff Bezos. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, again, something about this all I find funny. Do I find the upset emails from you funny? No, most leave me sad; sorry to have dismayed, confused, or misdirected you, sorry to have not replied,\u201d Perry said, later adding:\u201cI do not view our film programming as political. I try to choose films for the community that they want to see. Lake Oswego is diverse, whatever best serves you collectively best serves us (also need people to buy more than tickets, please arrive hungry \/ thirsty).\u201d<\/p>\n
It is uncertain if the revocation of the rights to \u201cMelania\u201d will impact the theater\u2019s ability to show future Amazon Studios films, such as \u201cProject Hail Mary.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lake Oswego theater loses rights to screen \u2018Melania\u2019 after marquee jokes Published 12:30 pm Monday, February 2, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-451097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}