By some measures, the film\u2019s $7 million haul was the best opening weekend for a documentary in a decade \u2014 though that claim is complicated since there is no universal definition of the genre. Concert films like \u201cTaylor Swift: The Eras Tour,\u201d which opened to $93 million in 2023, and stunt-driven fare like \u201cJackass Forever,\u201d which debuted to $23 million in 2022, complicate the comparison.<\/p>\n
Among political documentaries, only Michael Moore\u2019s \u201cFahrenheit 9\/11\u201d<\/a> opened higher. That 2004 film went on to become the highest-grossing documentary of all time in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n Second to Moore is an enviable position for \u201cMelania\u201d to land in, but Scott Mendelson, who runs the box office newsletter The Outside Scoop<\/a>, said that if it was any other film \u2014 and one produced by a studio not backed by a $2.6 trillion tech giant \u2014 the film would be a clear financial failure.<\/p>\n \u201cBy normal math, it\u2019s a flop. But by streaming math, it\u2019s a hit.\u201d Mendelson said, referencing the documentary\u2019s eventual placement on Amazon Prime Video, the streaming wing of Amazon MGM. \u201cIf this was a Fox movie, it was a Sony Movie, it would be a flop, nobody would be questioning it.\u201d<\/p>\n The film\u2019s enormous budget far exceeds typical spending on documentaries. Films with a similar scope and focused on a single subject over a period of time are typically budgeted around $5 million, the New York Times reported<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n By contrast, \u201cMelania\u201d rivals the documentary budgets of Disney\u2019s Earth Day hits \u201cNature\u201d and \u201cOceans,\u201d both of which were multi-year, globe-spanning productions.<\/p>\n Josh Davidsburg, a documentary filmmaker and senior lecturer at the University of Maryland, called Amazon\u2019s spending \u201cquite shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard for documentaries to recoup their investments,\u201d Davidsburg told MS NOW. \u201cWe don\u2019t always expect to make our budgets back, so seeing Amazon put $75 million into this thing is quite shocking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Davidsburg said independent documentarians typically work with budgets between $100,000 and $600,000 \u2014 a fraction of what Amazon spent. Those funds have been getting harder to raise since the Trump administration gutted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting<\/a> and partially defunded its ITVS service<\/a>, which has offered financial backing for more than 1,400 film productions since 1989.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just hard to watch this discourse and the amount of money that [Amazon MGM] poured in while all of our other funding sources are drying up.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s lavish promotional campaign included a premiere on Thursday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, following a private White House screening on Jan. 24. Bezos attended the premiere, which was simulcast to 21 theaters nationwide. Melania Trump rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \tRecommended<\/p>\n The film was directed by Brett Ratner, known for the \u201cRush Hour\u201d film trilogy, a favorite of President Trump\u2019s. It is Ratner\u2019s first project since he was effectively exiled from Hollywood in 2017, after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct<\/a> during the early days of the #MeToo movement.<\/p>\n Ratner\u2019s career rehabilitation is set to continue at President Trump\u2019s request, after the president called for the David Ellison-owned Paramount Pictures to greenlight a fourth film in the \u201cRush Hour\u201d series with Ratner directing. It would be his first narrative feature since 2014\u2019s \u201cHercules.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite scathing reviews from critics \u2014 just 10 percent of the film\u2019s reviews from professional film critics were positive on Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> (which is owned by Versant, MS NOW\u2019s parent company) \u2014 \u201cMelania\u201d succeeded in finding its core audience: 99 percent of audience members gave it a favorable review on the site, and Deadline reported<\/a> that the film overindexed in areas like Texas, Florida, and cities with populations under half-a-million.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response, with early box office for \u2018Melania\u2019 exceeding our expectations,\u201d Kevin Wilson, head of domestic theatrical distribution for Amazon MGM, said.<\/p>\n Roughly 72 percent of the film\u2019s opening weekend audience was female, and 72 percent was over the age of 55, according to media analytics company Comscore<\/a>. The majority of the moviegoers were white.<\/p>\n Mendelson said the film\u2019s opening benefitted from lowered expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the pre-release punditry that suggested an opening between $3 and $5 million did little more than create an environment where a $7 million opening could be sold as an over performance,\u201d Mendelson said.<\/p>\n \u201cMelania\u201d is the latest documentary to find relative success among conservative audiences, following 2024\u2019s \u201cAm I Racist?,\u201d which starred The Daily Wire\u2019s right-wing provocateur Matt Walsh. But, unlike that film, which was reportedly<\/a> made for roughly $3 million, \u201cMelania\u201d has virtually no path into the black while in theaters<\/p>\n If it\u2019s lucky, Mendelson said, it will crawl to the $20 million mark \u2014 far from profitability, but hardly a concern for Amazon\u2019s balance sheet.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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