{"id":280041,"date":"2026-02-04T10:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/280041\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T10:09:07","slug":"grift-and-greed-on-the-big-screen-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/280041\/","title":{"rendered":"grift and greed on the big screen \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">\u2018Melania\u2019, the documentary about US first lady Melania Trump, took in an estimated $7m when it hit US cinema screens at the weekend making it the highest debut by a non-music documentary or concert film in more than a decade. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">These are the sort of figures other documentaries can only dream of, so it\u2019s a hit? <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Far from it says Irish Times journalist Hugh Linehan who points out that it cost Amazon $45 million to make plus a reported $35 million in marketing costs so financially it makes no sense. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">And critically? Well \u201cboring\u201d is probably the nicest thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/film\/review\/2026\/01\/31\/melania-review-shameless-propaganda-that-could-put-you-to-sleep\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/film\/review\/2026\/01\/31\/melania-review-shameless-propaganda-that-could-put-you-to-sleep\/\">reviewers<\/a> have said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Over nearly two hours it reveals very little about the former Slovenian model other than she wears nice clothes and even nicer shoes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">For Linehan, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/media\/2026\/02\/03\/melania-the-movie-mash-up-of-carmela-soprano-and-eva-braun-on-the-set-of-zoolander\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/media\/2026\/02\/03\/melania-the-movie-mash-up-of-carmela-soprano-and-eva-braun-on-the-set-of-zoolander\/\">it\u2019s a classic Trump family grift<\/a>, this time with Melania making the money. She is expected to be paid $28 million for the documentary which charts the 20 days in the lead-up to her husband\u2019s 2025 inauguration. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph free \">Presented by Bernice Harrison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Melania\u2019, the documentary about US first lady Melania Trump, took in an estimated $7m when it hit US&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[969,93,61,60,22680,270],"class_list":["post-280041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-melania-trump","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}