Amazon may have spent an outlandish amount of money on Melania, the documentary about first lady Melania Trump, but that hasn’t stopped the film from receiving harsh criticism both from industry insiders and the general public, who haven’t stopped laughing at the film that is predicted to be a history-making flop.
Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to Melania and spent another $35 million on marketing, including a coveted commercial spot in the NFL playoffs, which is 10 times what other high-profile documentaries have spent on promotion.
This has Hollywood questioning the motives behind Amazon’s acquisition and the hefty price tag. “This has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing,” Ted Hope, who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020 and was instrumental in starting the company’s film division, told The New York Times. “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”
The film gives a fly-on-the-wall view of Melania Trump in the days leading up to Donald Trump taking office for his second term, a topic that no one has any interest in seeing, as ticket sales and public backlash are anything to go by.
Unlike with the typical promotion of a new film, Amazon didn’t release advanced screeners of the film to journalists and reviewers, and all scheduled Thursday screenings in theaters were cancelled, according to NPR. The documentary can't even fill seats at the movie theater closest to Mar-a-Lago, where only 13% of seats were sold for the opening weekend.
Ticket sales have also been so lackluster that there is a growing trend on social media of people posting screenshots of their local theater’s seat availability for the film’s premiere to show that theaters across the country are empty.
A Craigslist ad offering to pay people $50 to fill seats at screenings of Melania has also gone viral on social media. It’s unclear if the listing is legitimate or was placed on the site as a joke, but regardless, it does seem to point to people’s feelings about the film.
Not only have people been roasting the film on social media and review bombing it on Letterbox, but vandals also targeted ads for the film on buses in Los Angeles, where the transport authority was forced to reassign some of the city buses. One vandal wrote “My husband f–--s kids,” across one of the movie posters at a bus stop, The Daily Beast reports.
The film has sparked controversy not only for focusing on the MAGA first lady, but because it was helmed by disgraced director Brett Ratner, who was once considered to be a highly bankable filmmaker before six women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct, including actresses Olivia Munn who alleged he had “furiously” masturbated in front and Natasha Henstridge, who claimed he he “physically forced” her to perform oral sex.
The film is opening in 1,500 theaters across the U.S. on Friday, but CNN is predicting the film will be a massive flop, with data expert Harry Enten saying that there is a 63 percent chance Melania will be considered “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes and will only make $1 to $5 million during the opening weekend.
And people on social media aren’t letting this opportunity to make fun of the Tumps pass them by. Keep scrolling to see the funniest reactions.
