First Lady Melania Trump‘s documentary, named Melania, has smashed its dismal box office sales estimates during opening weekend – much to the shock of Hollywood.
The movie earned $7million in ticket sales across the US and Canada, making it the best-performing theatrical release for a documentary, outside of concert films, since 2012.
The film’s strong performance surprised Hollywood critics, who gave it brutal reviews. Initial projections for ticket sales were $3million to $5million, based on the pace of ticket sales last week.
‘No one saw that coming,’ the Hollywood Reporter wrote, adding that many had written the film off, ‘based on empty, or nearly empty, seat maps in cinemas across the country.’
Brain Stelter, the chief media analyst at CNN, criticized Melania’s performance on X and wrote: ‘Amazon MGM Studios is touting strong ticket sales, but the film is still far far short of turning a profit, i.e. the typical Hollywood metric for success.’
The Daily Beast also published its own criticism after people heralded the box office numbers, saying that Amazon is ‘somehow celebrating as a success, even though the movie is still down nearly $68 million.’
Jeff Bock, senior media analyst for Exhibitor Relations, also exhibited shock at the sheer number that the documentary was able to rake in.
He said that anything over $1 million – which Melania trumped seven times over – is ‘a huge number’ that indicates ‘a lot of folks who don’t normally go to the movies went to this,’ USA Today reported.
The opening weekend of First Lady Melania Trump’s documentary, aptly named Melania, smashed its dismal box office sales estimates
The movie earned $7million in ticket sales across the US and Canada, making it the best-performing theatrical release for a documentary, outside of concert films, since 2012. A full theatre for the theatrical release is pictured
Professional critics gave the film brutal reviews, but audiences loved it. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave the movie a 10 percent, while audiences gave it 99 percent
Despite the negative reviews, with the film scoring a shocking 10 percent from Rotten Tomatoes’ professional critics, viewers seemed to love what they saw.
Rotten Tomatoes’ viewer rating system, which allows anyone to review a movie, is at 99 percent for Melania. Viewers gave it an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls and five stars on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak.
Overall, Melania had the third-highest performance of all theatrical releases over the weekend.
Send Help, a horror thriller released Friday, topped the charts with about $20million in ticket sales, and Iron Lung, a horror sci-fi flick which premiered on the same day, earned second place with an estimated $18million in sales.
Documentaries other than concert films rarely pull in big numbers at the box office. The last one to earn more sales than Melania was the nature film Chimpanzee, which earned $10.7million in 2012, or about $15million after adjusting for inflation.
Theaters in rural areas contributed about 46 percent of domestic ticket sales, which is much higher than usual for an opening weekend, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.
Republican counties made up 53 percent of ticket sales, and the film performed best in red states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona.
An overwhelming 70 percent of Melania ticket-buyers were women over the age of 55, according to Amazon, which owns the film’s distribution rights.
Overall, Melania had the third-highest performance of all theatrical releases over the weekend. A full theatre for the release with Melania onstage is pictured
Some critics have said Amazon’s remarkably high bid for Melania’s distribution rights was a way for the company to ingratiate itself with the Trump family. Amazon denies those claims
The company paid an eye-watering $40million for those rights, as well as an additional $35million to market the movie.
The movie was released in 1,778 domestic theatres, which keep about half of the ticket revenue. That means Amazon has so far earned about $3.5million back from its $75million investment.
Melania is also being screened in an additional 1,600 theatres internationally. Amazon has not released overseas ticket sale figures, but box office analysts said the film performed worse outside of America.
Amazon will be able to further monetize the documentary on its streaming platform, Prime Video, where it is expected to become available in three to four weeks. Even so, it will have to earn many tens of millions of dollars to recoup the initial investment.
Some critics have said the company’s remarkably high bid for distribution rights, which was $26million more than the next highest offer, was a means to please the Trump family.
Amazon has stated that it purchased the rights ‘for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.’ The company also said it was ‘very encouraged’ by the documentary’s opening weekend sales.
Melania, which was directed by Rush Hour’s Brett Ratner, followed the first lady for 20 days in January of last year and culminated with President Trump’s inauguration.
It was the first movie directed by Ratner since 2017, when he was accused by six women of sexual misconduct. Ratner has denied the allegations.
