Was “Melania” worth it?
Amazon MGM‘s controversial documentary about the first lady of the United States has earned $13.5 million after two weekends of release. It’s projected to end its theatrical run with $16 million to $20 million, which would place “Melania” among the highest-grossing docs (not including concert films like Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance”) in years. And moviegoers, most of whom were older white women, liked what they saw on screen. “Melania” earned an “A” grade on CinemaScore and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a vast discrepancy from the 8% Rotten Tomatoes average it received from critics.
If Amazon MGM executives are popping champagne, however, it’s not because “Melania” is a financial triumph. Theater owners get to keep roughly half of ticket sales, meaning in the best-case scenario, the studio is walking away with just $10 million. For traditional studios, that’s hardly enough to justify the film’s price tag: Amazon paid a staggering $40 million to acquire “Melania” and a follow-up streaming docuseries. Then the company shelled out $35 million on the theatrical marketing spend, an unprecedented sum considering documentaries aren’t traditionally a driver of big box office dollars.
Amazon’s expenditure has led others to question whether “Melania” was a box office gamble or bribe. Consider the global tallies for top-earners in the non-fiction space in the past decade, which were a string of 2018 winners including the stranger-than-fiction “Three Identical Strangers” ($13.4 million), Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait “RBG” ($14.4 million), Fred Rogers life story “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” ($22 million) and climber Alex Honnold’s death-defying “Free Solo” ($29.2 million). Production and marketing expenses for those films were all in the low seven-figures.
Amazon’s deep pockets makes it easier to absorb losses as the company enters the theatrical space in earnest. One of the studio’s only major releases of last year, the #MeToo-inspired “After the Hunt,” carried an $80 million production budget and ended its theatrical run with just $9 million worldwide. In 2024, Dwayne Johnson’s holiday adventure “Red One” cost a staggering $250 million and earned $186 million globally. A general rule is that films need to gross 2.5 times their production budget to break even theatrically (which plenty of movies don’t do, particularly in the current box office landscape). Neither “After the Hunt” nor “Red One” were close to achieving that metric, though Amazon MGM’s distribution chief Kevin Wilson said in the past that the studio uses a different barometer for success. He’s maintained that a win for the company would be earning back the marketing and distribution costs.
“Whether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model. We’re getting a massive marketing campaign that’s being paid for before the film gets to streaming,” Wilson told Variety in 2024. “If we can put these movies out theatrically and cover our P&A [print and advertising] costs, why wouldn’t we?”
In the case of “Melania,” Amazon MGM is unlikely to recoup the money it spent to market and distribute the documentary. Hollywood rivals believe that Amazon MGM is after something more valuable than profits on a single film. Given the lavish spending (Amazon’s bid was reportedly around $25 million above Disney’s next-best offer of $14 million) there’s been rampant speculation that the doc is the retailer’s attempt to cozy up to the current administration. Although “Melania” would be more of a proactive effort, media companies have been more willing to bend to Trump’s will during his second term. Last summer, Paramount paid $16 million to the president to settle what the company initially called a “meritless” lawsuit tied to “60 Minutes,” while a year earlier, Disney wrote a $15 million check to Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit brought against ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.
When Amazon MGM acquired “Melania” in early 2025, a studio spokesperson said, “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.”
Amazon, as a business, is unique in other ways. At least compared to other streamers, the company is less concerned about churn, a term for the rate at which subscribers cancel services. More than 200 million people subscribe to Prime for free shipping on paper towels, shampoo and trash bags — a portion of whom may not even realize a membership also grants them access to stream thousands of movies and TV shows. Still, Amazon MGM can monetize films like “Melania” when they land on streaming. In several statements about the theatrical release of “Melania,” Wilson argued the big-screen debut (and the endless conversations it has generated) only boosts the movie’s profile.
“Together, theatrical and streaming represent two distinct value-creating moments that amplify the film’s overall impact,” Wilson said after ticket sales for “Melania” declined 67% in its second weekend of release. “Audience response is already validating this approach, with exit data showing strong intent to rewatch on Prime Video and meaningful interest in the forthcoming docuseries.”
Industry watchers are mixed on how “Melania” will perform on Prime Video. Some believe that everyone who had interest has already watched Amazon’s glossy look at the first lady in the lead up to the inauguration. Others suggest it could see a surge from morbidly curious liberals wouldn’t never pay for a ticket for a film endorsed by the Trumps and directed by director Brett Ratner, who has been exiled from Hollywood since he was accused in 2017 of sexual harassment.
A loss in the tens (or, heck, even hundreds) of millions can be chalked up to a rounding error for Amazon, which has a $2.2 trillion market cap. It’s hard to estimate the losses on “Melania” because like other streaming services, Amazon MGM doesn’t disclose the way it values streaming viewership. However, most companies would be writing down tens of millions on the film.
Amazon’s true metric of success might not be ticket sales or streaming figures but rather how the president is feeling about his wife’s big screen debut. After all, those signature Melania Trump popcorn boxes could pay off with regulatory approvals, government contracts and all the missions to space that Bezos could dare to dream. In this transactional administration, $75 million may just be the price of doing business.