The Melania documentary’s monumental flop has some industry professionals wondering why Amazon accepted the project in the first place.
The ecommerce giant’s film studio shelled out a whopping $40 million to make the motion picture, which was produced by Melania Trump herself and directed by accused Hollywood abuser and profoundly cancelled filmmaker Brett Ratner.
Some $35 million was set aside to promote Melania, nearly double the initial budget, squeezing advertisements into television screens across the country and paying top dollar for highly coveted commercial slots in the NFL playoff games.
Altogether, Melania is the most expensive documentary film ever produced, with a rollout more akin to a mid-grade blockbuster than a nonfiction portrait.
Before the first lady’s film was signed—with much gusto by the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy—some of the most expensive documentary productions included Planet Earth, a groundbreaking portrait of the globe’s various ecosystems that cost the BBC roughly $25 million, and The World At War, a sweeping 26-part documentary series that covered hundreds of interviews and cost $17.6 million.
But even those examples are far and away from the typical price tag on a documentary. Super Size Me, which grossed over $20.6 million at the worldwide box office, cost just $65,000 to produce.
That’s caused some in Hollywood to question why Melania was made in the first place.
“This has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing,” Ted Hope, the former co-head of movies at Amazon Studios, 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?”
And yet the film has hardly attracted any eyes whatsoever. The documentary has been advertised as a fly-on-the-wall depiction of Melania’s life in the days preceding her husband’s second presidential inauguration—a topic that, judging by ticket sales, interests no one.
So far, Melania has struggled to fill seats, so much so that the realization sparked a social media trend this week in which users post their local AMC or Regal Cinema’s seat availability for the film’s premiere. Across the country, theaters are empty.
The situation has become so dire that conservative groups have gotten involved, buying out entire blocks of seats or even whole screenings in a flagrant effort to save face for the president.
“This isn’t organic demand,” one GOP insider told gossip columnist Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice substack. “It’s about optics. Empty theaters look terrible.”
Craigslist ads have popped up, with at least one offering to pay people as much as $50 in order to attend screenings of the film, though it’s not clear if the listings are legitimate or a joke.
“If the GOP didn’t buy the seats, no one would,” another source told Shuter.
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