{"id":469766,"date":"2026-02-12T08:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T08:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469766\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T08:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T08:03:11","slug":"melania-loses-money-in-theaters-but-box-office-was-never-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469766\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Melania’ Loses Money in Theaters, But Box Office Was Never the Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWas \u201cMelania<\/a>\u201d worth it?<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon MGM<\/a>\u2018s controversial documentary about the first lady of the United States has earned $13.5 million after two weekends of release. It\u2019s projected to end its theatrical run with $16 million to $20 million, which would place \u201cMelania\u201d among the highest-grossing docs (not including concert films like Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cThe Eras Tour\u201d and Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cRenaissance\u201d) in years. And moviegoers, most of whom were older white women<\/a>, liked what they saw on screen. \u201cMelania\u201d earned an \u201cA\u201d grade on CinemaScore and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a vast discrepancy from the 8% Rotten Tomatoes average it received from critics.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Amazon MGM executives are popping champagne, however, it\u2019s not because \u201cMelania\u201d is a financial triumph. Theater owners get to keep roughly half of ticket sales, meaning in the best-case scenario, the studio is walking away with just $10 million. For traditional studios, that\u2019s hardly enough to justify the film\u2019s price tag: Amazon paid a staggering $40 million to acquire \u201cMelania\u201d and a follow-up streaming docuseries. Then the company shelled out $35 million on the theatrical marketing spend, an unprecedented sum considering documentaries aren\u2019t traditionally a driver of big box office dollars.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon\u2019s expenditure has led others to question whether \u201cMelania\u201d was a box office gamble or bribe. Consider the global tallies for top-earners in the non-fiction space in the past decade, which were a string of 2018 winners including the stranger-than-fiction \u201cThree Identical Strangers\u201d ($13.4 million), Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait \u201cRBG\u201d ($14.4 million), Fred Rogers life story \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor\u201d ($22 million) and climber Alex Honnold\u2019s death-defying \u201cFree Solo\u201d ($29.2 million). Production and marketing expenses for those films were all in the low seven-figures. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon\u2019s deep pockets makes it easier to absorb losses as the company enters the theatrical space in earnest. One of the studio\u2019s only major releases of last year, the #MeToo-inspired \u201cAfter the Hunt,\u201d carried an $80 million production budget and ended its theatrical run with just $9 million worldwide. In 2024, Dwayne Johnson\u2019s holiday adventure \u201cRed One\u201d cost a staggering $250 million and earned $186 million globally. A general rule is that films need to gross 2.5 times their production budget to break even theatrically (which plenty of movies don\u2019t do, particularly in the current box office landscape). Neither \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d nor \u201cRed One\u201d were close to achieving that metric, though Amazon MGM\u2019s distribution chief Kevin Wilson said in the past that the studio uses a different barometer for success. He\u2019s maintained that a win for the company would be earning back the marketing and distribution costs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model. We\u2019re getting a massive marketing campaign that\u2019s being paid for before the film gets to streaming,\u201d Wilson told\u00a0Variety\u00a0in 2024<\/a>. \u201cIf we can put these movies out theatrically and cover our P&A [print and advertising] costs, why wouldn\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the case of \u201cMelania,\u201d Amazon MGM is unlikely to recoup the marketing and distribution spend. Hollywood rivals believe that Amazon MGM is after something more valuable than profits on a single film. Given the lavish spending (Amazon\u2019s bid was reportedly around $25 million above Disney\u2019s next-best offer of $14 million) there\u2019s been rampant speculation that the doc is the retailer\u2019s attempt to cozy up to the current administration. Although \u201cMelania\u201d would be more of a proactive effort, media companies have been more willing to bend to Trump\u2019s will during his second term. Last summer, Paramount paid $16 million<\/a> to the president to settle what the company initially called a \u201cmeritless\u201d lawsuit tied to \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d while a year earlier, Disney wrote a $15 million check<\/a> to Trump\u2019s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit brought against ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Amazon MGM acquired \u201cMelania\u201d in early 2025<\/a>, a studio spokesperson said, \u201cWe licensed the film for one reason and one reason only \u2014 because we think customers are going to love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon, as a business, is unique in other ways. At least compared to other streamers, the company is less concerned about churn, a term for the rate at which subscribers cancel services. More than 200 million people subscribe to Prime for free shipping on paper towels, shampoo and trash bags \u2014 a portion of whom may not even realize a membership also grants them access to stream thousands of movies and TV shows. Still, Amazon MGM can monetize films like \u201cMelania\u201d when they land on streaming. In several statements about the theatrical release of \u201cMelania,\u201d Wilson argued the big-screen debut (and the endless conversations it has generated) only boosts the movie\u2019s profile.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTogether, theatrical and streaming represent two distinct value-creating moments that amplify the film\u2019s overall impact,\u201d Wilson said after ticket sales for \u201cMelania\u201d declined 67% in its second weekend<\/a> of release. \u201cAudience response is already validating this approach, with exit data showing strong intent to rewatch on Prime Video and meaningful interest in the forthcoming docuseries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndustry watchers are mixed on how \u201cMelania\u201d will perform on Prime Video. Some believe that everyone who had interest has already watched Amazon\u2019s glossy look at the first lady in the lead up to the inauguration. Others suggest it could see a surge from morbidly curious liberals who wouldn\u2019t ever pay for a ticket for a film endorsed by the Trumps and directed by director Brett Ratner, who has been exiled from Hollywood since he was accused in 2017 of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n

\n\tA loss in the tens (or, heck, even hundreds) of millions can be chalked up to a rounding error for Amazon, which has a $2.2 trillion market cap. It\u2019s hard to estimate the losses on \u201cMelania\u201d because, like other streaming services, Amazon MGM doesn\u2019t disclose the way it values streaming viewership. However, most companies would be writing down tens of millions on the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon\u2019s true metric of success might not be ticket sales or streaming figures but rather how the president is feeling about his wife\u2019s big screen debut. After all, those signature Melania Trump popcorn boxes could pay off with regulatory approvals, government contracts and all the missions to space<\/a> that Bezos could dare to dream. In this transactional administration, $75 million may just be the price of doing business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Was \u201cMelania\u201d worth it? Amazon MGM\u2018s controversial documentary about the first lady of the United States has earned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[178050,49,48,75,80407],"class_list":["post-469766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amazon-mgm","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-melania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469766","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=469766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}