First Lady Melania Trump’s new documentary, Melania, did better than expected in its opening weekend, despite largely negative reviews by critics. With more than $7 million in ticket sales, the documentary came in third at the box office and performed better than any other of its kind in more than a decade. But it was also the most expensive documentary ever. So, was it a blockbuster or just a bust? It sort of depends on how you look at it.
Melania follows titular character Melania Trump around for the 20 days immediately preceding her husband’s second inauguration. Over the course of 104 minutes, the first lady is seen trying on dresses, examining carpets, interviewing potential staffers, and preparing in general to move back into the White House. She talks some about her mother, Amalija Knavs, and her son, Barron.
Vanity Fair called it a “purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary,” adding that “all the money in the world can’t make good propaganda.”
There’s more – but the rest of the industry “experts” seemed to have the same opinion. Viewers apparently couldn’t have disagreed more. Coming back to the movie-ranking website Rotten Tomatoes, Melania has a 99% audience score.
The film was expected to gross about $3 to $5 million in its opening weekend. It hit an estimated $7 million instead – more than any other documentary outside of concert films in the last 14 years. And it didn’t top the box office. First up over the weekend was Disney’s Send Help, earning a weekend total of just over $19 million. Number two was sci-fi flick Iron Lung at $17.8 million. Melania came in third, though it did beat out the other debut film, Jason Statham’s Shelter, which came in sixth in total for the weekend at $5.5 million. (Numbers four and five this weekend weren’t new films.)
Left-leaning media outlet The Daily Beast called it a massive bomb, focusing on the fact that it came in third and sold out only two theaters in the United States. Of course, those ticket sales numbers come from Fandango – and, as WIRED (the original source for those numbers) pointed out, “it’s possible that not all movie theaters sell tickets through that website.” What’s also “possible” (read: how things actually work in the real world) is that no theaters sell exclusively through Fandango – so sales from one website won’t account for total ticket sales at any location.
Melania opened in an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 theaters nationwide – out of roughly 39,000 total in the country. At least one cinema in Minnesota that was slated to show the film pulled it entirely after the shootings of Alex Pretti and Reneé Good.
By comparison, Send Help, which grossed north of $19 million, was released in almost 3,500 locations. The simple truth is that documentaries – or, for that matter, any non-fiction films – very rarely do as well as fiction flicks. They’re a niche product that most American moviegoers simply don’t care about. Many folks will watch a documentary if it scrolls across their screen at home on some streaming platform they’re already paying for, but shelling out for a movie ticket and heading to the cinema is another beast entirely.
But before we go and call Melania a blockbuster – which, if nothing else, it was by documentary standards – we need to examine the cost. Three numbers are widely reported, though often in a somewhat misleading way. Amazon MGM paid about $40 million to acquire distribution rights to this film and another $35 million in advertising for it. That comes out to a total of $75 million. Those three numbers are touted across the media, with either the first or last being used as what the film cost.
But that’s what the film cost Amazon to buy and advertise – not what it cost Melania Trump’s production company to make. That all-important number, unfortunately, has not yet been released publicly. Still, $75 million sure is a lot of money to pay for a film that only hits $7 million on opening weekend. Liberty Nation depends on the support of our readers. Donate now!
Again, looking at Send Help, that movie made just over $19 million, but it reportedly cost an estimated $40 million to make – the same price Amazon paid to acquire the rights to Melania. Many in the media are calling Mrs. Trump’s documentary a flop because of how much it cost versus what it earned so far – but by that metric, the number one film this week bombed as well.
Most movies need to gross two to three times their production budgets to break even, which often takes several weeks or even months of screen time after the initial release. Melania might very well end up a flop – or it might earn out and become quite profitable for Amazon. One must assume the $40 million paid to acquire the rights likely already made it quite profitable for the Trumps. In any case, it seems a bit silly to say a film that ranked third in the box office charts on its debut weekend and outperformed any other in its category made in the last 14 years bombed.
