“Melania,” the documentary about first lady Melania Trump, is exceeding box office expectations, with estimates Sunday showing it will gross $7.04 million in its opening weekend.
The documentary ranked third overall for the weekend, behind director Sam Raimi’s thriller “Send Help” ($20 million) and the video game adaptation “Iron Lung” ($17.8 million) from YouTuber Mark Fischbach (better known as Markiplier).
Amazon reportedly paid $40 million to acquire ‘Melania’ and spent $35 million promoting it. So even if the documentary beats pre-release estimates of $3 million to $5 million in its opening weekend, it’s highly unlikely it will make a profit in theaters.
Amazon’s bid outstripped the next highest bidder, Disney, by $26 million, and critics argued the deal had more to do with the Trump administration’s victory than the film’s box office potential. Ted Hope, a veteran film executive who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020, told the New York Times that the film “has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that doesn’t include music licensing.”
“How can you not equate that to doing favors or outright bribing?” Hope said. “How could you not?”
The film is the first film directed by Brett Ratner since 2017, when multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct. (Ratner has denied these accusations.) Rolling Stone reports that two-thirds of “Melania’s” New York crew have officially requested not to appear in the film.
While Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the screening of ‘Melania’ held at the White House last weekend, ‘Melania’ received harsh reviews after failing to receive advance screenings from critics. The documentary currently has a 7% on review aggregator Metacritic, indicating “overwhelming dislike.” It has a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Tech Crunch Event
Boston, Massachusetts
|
June 23, 2026
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis described the piece as “a very limited, carefully stage-managed chronicle of Mrs. Trump’s daily life” during the 20 days before Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
In a statement, Kevin Wilson, Amazon MGM’s head of domestic theatrical distribution, described this weekend as “an important first step in the long tail life cycle of both the film and the upcoming docuseries,” which he predicted will have “significant longevity” on the Amazon Prime streaming service.
