Everything About 'Melania' is Unprecedented, and Not in a Good Way

Amazon spent $75 million on a 'documentary' directed by an alleged sexual predator

What do you do when you’re the most powerful man in the world and want to ingratiate yourself to the wife who is rarely seen in your company?

Do you buy her flowers? Schedule a regular date night? Go to couples therapy?

If you’re Donald Trump, the answer is simple: you use your remarkable leverage as the president of the United States to land your wife a starring role in a Hollywood movie distributed by a tech company eager to curry favor with your administration.

In case you hadn’t heard, Friday marks the premiere of Melania, a documentary following the president’s third wife in the twenty days leading up to the inauguration last year. Amazon reportedly paid an extortionate $40 million for rights to the film, which is directed by Brett Ratner, the disgraced Hollywood hotshot who has not made a film since six women accused him of sexual assault and harassment in 2017. The first lady is also an executive producer on the project, which means she likely made millions for her involvement and exerted control over her portrayal.

While it’s become standard practice for former occupants of the White House to sign lucrative book deals, book speaking engagements, and launch other media ventures — and to get flak for doing so — it is virtually unheard of for a sitting first lady to cash in while her husband holds complete power in Washington. But, as we know, the Trumps excel at violating norms.

The film had a splashy private screening at the White House on Saturday night, hours after CBP agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and as a massive blizzard bore down on large swathes of the country. The event, attended by tech luminaries including Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Apple’s Tim Cook, was held in a makeshift screening room since the White House movie theater, along with the rest of the East Wing, has been demolished. Guests were treated to black and white Melania cookies, black and white M&Ms, and black and white commemorative popcorn buckets.

It was followed Thursday night with a red carpet premiere at the Kennedy Center attended by numerous administration officials, including embattled DHS secretary Kristi Noem, and right-wing influencers who under normal circumstances would probably struggle to get cast on a season of The Traitors. All of this schmoozing has taken place against the backdrop of an utterly grim week in American history, as backlash mounts over the administration’s lethal siege of Minneapolis.

Melania was not made available to critics ahead of the premiere, and the minute-long trailer released last month mostly shows the first lady walking in various locations while wearing sunglasses. According to promotional material from Amazon, Melania follows the former model, a cipher mostly known for her questionable taste in outerwear, as she “orchestrates inauguration plans, navigates the complexities of the White House transition, and moves her family back to the nation’s capital.”

A more concise logline might have read: “rich lady walks.”

If that sounds less than scintillating to you, you are not alone. The internet is awash in reports of theaters, particularly overseas, that have sold almost no tickets. Wired found only two theaters in the United States that were sold out in advance. A (quite possibly fake) listing on Craigslist Boston offers $50 plus free tickets to anyone who will watch the movie (viewers “must remain in seats for entirety of film.”) On Letterboxed, a top review reads, “If they showed this on a plane, people would still walk out.” The film was pulled from theaters in South Africa, with the distributor citing “recent developments” for the abrupt cancellation. (You can draw your own conclusions about what those “recent developments” might be.)

All of which raises questions about Amazon’s extravagant investment in the film. In addition to a $40 million licensing fee, the tech giant reportedly coughed up $35 million to promote Melania, wallpapering deep blue cities like New York and Los Angeles with advertising that was quickly vandalized with devil horns and Hitler mustaches. Amazon is spending a total of $75 million for a film that is projected to make perhaps $2-5 million in its opening weekend. It will be released in an estimated 3300 theaters worldwide.

Meanwhile, the corporation announced it is cutting 16,000 jobs this week, while massive cuts are also expected at the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post in the coming days.

The decline of documentaries

An expenditure of $75 million is “totally unprecedented for a documentary,” said Anthony Kaufman, a writer and educator who has covered independent film and documentaries for more than 25 years. (And has an excellent Substack that you should all subscribe to.) “It’s not realistic or practical or in line with anything that companies are doing for documentaries.”

Kaufman suggests that the film is an attempt to “eventize” Melania Trump and “make her Taylor Swift on the right.” Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, was released in 8000 theaters around the world and brought in a global haul of $261 million over its opening weekend in October 2023. (Unlike Melania, it sold out well in advance.)

There was a time in not-so-distant memory when a documentary about a controversial subject, like America’s obsession with guns or the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, could receive a wide theatrical release, rake in gazillions of dollars, and win lots of awards. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which is generally regarded as the highest-grossing documentary of all time, made $222 million in 2004.

Those days are long gone.

The release of The Jinx in 2015 sparked a streaming documentary boom that has fundamentally reshaped the industry and permanently altered audience viewing habits. While people are seemingly consuming more nonfiction content than ever, they’re nearly always doing so at home.

What they watch — and the only things that streaming services seem willing to pay for — are documentaries about notorious true crime cases or image-conscious celebrities who, like Melania Trump, are often involved as producers. But even a glossy celebrity film might cost a few million dollars to make and promote— not $75 million.

COVID also dealt a serious blow to theatrical documentaries. As recently as 2018, a number of them became modest box office hits including Free Solo ($29 million), Won’t You Be My Neighbor? ($22 million), and RBG ($14 million).

“There’s this question of what is a theatrical documentary nowadays?” Kaufman said. “And it really has to be something that people are not watching at home.”

By comparison, the highest-grossing theatrical documentary of 2025 was Becoming Led Zeppelin, which made $12 million (and was released in IMAX). In a distant second place was No Other Land, about the destruction of a Palestinian community in the West Bank, which won the Oscar and managed to eke out $2.5 million in sales despite not having an actual distributor.

As the struggles of that film make clear, Hollywood’s appetite for risky political documentaries has all but disappeared.

The Melania release coincides with the Sundance Film Festival, the annual winter gathering where industry executives once paid whopping sums to acquire independent films. This year’s lineup included a number of high-profile topical documentaries, including a film about the near-fatal stabbing of Salman Rushdie, directed by celebrated filmmaker Alex Gibney. It does not yet have distribution.

“None of the companies want to acquire anything that is political, because they’re afraid of backlash,” Kaufman told me. “So the political documentaries that have been the bread and butter of American documentary for the last 50 years are struggling to find an outlet.”

Conservative films like Am I Racist? have fared better. The anti-DEI mockumentary produced by The Daily Wire brought in $12 million at the box office in 2024, suggesting that the MAGA faithful are willing to leave their houses and pay money to see documentaries that align with their worldview.

Profitability isn’t the point

However Melania fares over the weekend, it’s inevitable that the White House (and Amazon) will put a positive spin on its performance. Because it is being released in so many theaters, even a modest per-screen haul would make it one of the top-performing theatrical documentaries in years.

That doesn’t mean it will be profitable, mind you. And that doesn’t seem to be the point.

The film appears to be less a documentary than a massive corporate bribe in plain sight, the gussied up equivalent of $75 million stuffed into a Cava bag. The goal isn’t capturing some elusive truth about our remarkably inscrutable first lady, but rather getting in good with her husband — and his loyalists at the FCC.

This partially explains the fact that Amazon wasn’t the only company interested in Melania: according to the New York Times, Disney also bid on the project (though it offered considerably less than Amazon).

Comparing Melania to other political documentaries or celebrity vanity projects may be less instructive than comparing it to the massive payments being doled out by media companies to settle Trump-related lawsuits. CBS shelled out $16 million; ABC News $15 million; YouTube a whopping $24.5 million.

Viewed in this light, Amazon’s $75 million investment in Melania is still egregious, if slightly less so.

Amazon, which regularly does business with the federal government and receives billions in tax breaks, has said only that “we licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.”

On the red carpet Thursday night, Ratner called allegations of corporate corruption “ridiculous.”

“This movie is one of the most expensive movies — documentaries — in the genre ever made,” he said (a fact that no one is disputing). “It wasn’t about getting rich. I mean, I think the Trumps are wealthy and successful enough. This is about giving me the ability to hire the best crew in the world…when you see the movie, you’ll go, ‘Oh, we see where the money went now.’ This wasn’t about corruption. Melania only cared about one thing, making a great movie for audiences.”

Ratner was able to convince other talented crew to join Melania, which boasts the involvement of two Oscar-nominated cinematographers: Jeff Cronenweth (Gone Girl, The Social Network, Fight Club) and Dante Spinotti (L.A. Confidential, Heat, The Insider). Famed fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth shot the movie poster.

A post-#MeToo comeback

A decade ago, Ratner was one of the highest-paid filmmakers in Hollywood, known for a flashy style that he brought to blockbusters like the Rush Hour franchise and X-Men: The Last Stand. Even though he was also known for his abrasive personality — he had to bow out of producing the Academy Awards in 2011 because he used a homophobic slur in an interview — Ratner was considered such a reliable hitmaker that he was able to secure a $450 million deal with Warner Bros. in 2013.

But that all changed a few years later, when the Los Angeles Times published a bombshell investigation alleging a pattern of sexual misconduct dating back decades. Actress Natasha Henstridge said that Ratner forced her to perform oral sex on him when she was a teenage model in the ‘90s. Olivia Munn alleged that Ratner masturbated in front of her on a film set in 2004.

Ratner denied the allegations, but his career quickly dried up. Warner Bros. cut ties with the filmmaker, rejecting his pitch to direct a fourth Rush Hour film. He made another attempt at a comeback in 2021, with plans for a Milli Vanilli biopic that quickly went nowhere. In 2023, he moved to Israel and appeared at the UN with Benjamin Netanyahu and Alan Dershowitz.

Ratner continues to be plagued by controversy: He appeared in a photo from the Epstein files that was released last month. The image shows him embracing Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling agent and Epstein buddy who killed himself in jail in 2022 after being charged with the rape of a minor.

Ratner’s willingness to take the gig isn’t that hard to explain. And it already seems to be paying off: At Trump’s behest, Rush Hour 4 is reportedly in the works at Paramount, the studio run by Larry Ellison’s son David, with Ratner attached as director.

And he is hardly the only canceled public figure to insist on staking a post #MeToo comeback. Comedian Louis CK continues to tour and released a novel last year. Woody Allen has plans to make a movie in Madrid.

And, lest we forget, there’s Donald Trump himself, who sits in the White House despite allegations of sexual misconduct made by two dozen women.

What to watch instead

Thankfully, there are plenty of alternatives. Why not start with Oscar-nominated documentaries that are available to stream at home, like Come See Me in the Good Light (Apple TV), The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix), The Alabama Solution (HBO Max), or Mr. Nobody Against Putin (Kino Film Collection). (Cutting Through Rocks is not yet available to stream.) Better yet, find a documentary playing in an actual theater in your area, if you can.

Or, if you just want to laugh (and cry), try firing up one of the dozens of movies and TV shows elevated by the presence of the brilliant Catherine O’Hara, who died Friday at seventy-one. Try Best in Show, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek or The Studio, for starters. Unlike the morbidly curious people seeking out Melania, you won’t be sorry you did.

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Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian.