How Amazon’s $75 million documentary on Melania Trump became a colossal disaster

The documentary bagged the kind of financial and institutional backing most filmmakers in the genre can only dream of. Amazon MGM Studios, under Jeff Bezos’s empire, secured the rights following an aggressive post-election bidding war that included Disney, Netflix, and Paramount Pictures. Amazon’s winning bid of $40 million far exceeded the competition, notably outstripping the second-highest offer of $14 million from Disney by roughly $26 million. Industry wallahs described this sum as having ‘no correlation to the marketplace,’ noting it is likely the highest price ever paid for a single documentary.

The deal was finalized shortly after eff Bezos dined with Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where she reportedly pitched the project directly to him. Beyond the initial licensing fee, Amazon committed an additional $35 million to marketing, bringing their total investment to $75 million. Melania Trump, who served as an executive producer and maintained editorial control, is reported to have personally pocketed 70% of the bid (approximately $28 million). The result is a fly-on-the-wall account of 20 days in Melania Trump’s life leading up to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in 2025. It is also, by nearly every measurable standard, a misfire.

What the documentary is all about

Helmed by the disgraced Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, whose career effectively stalled after multiple sexual assault allegations as part of #MeToo led to his exile from the industry. Ratner has not directed a film in years, which makes his selection both conspicuous and controversial. As several insiders put it bluntly, this was work no one else was rushing to take. Amazon’s decision to back the film raised immediate questions, particularly given the company’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, which coincided with the acquisition. No formal link has been acknowledged, but in an age Big Tech and politics go hand in hand, the appearance of favour-seeking/quid pro quo was difficult to dismiss.

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For all that spending, the film itself has almost nothing to say. Its promotional trailer —comprised largely of static shots of Melania Trump turning her head, walking through rooms, or gazing silently off-camera — was widely mocked upon release. Besides, there are stylistic echoes of earlier political campaigns, which have prompted accusations of recycled footage. We see Melania’s signature red-bottomed heels clacking through the halls of Mar-a-Lago to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, a choice that is particularly cheeky given the band’s history of cease-and-desist orders against the administration. From there, we are whisked onto a private jet, complete with a Trump bobblehead for that essential touch of class, en route to the blindingly gold Trump Tower.

At some point, Melania finally breathes the movie’s opening thesis: “Everyone wants to know.” However, in a documentary directed with the frantic energy of a 1990s music video or a high-end screensaver, we never actually find out. Instead, we get 90 minutes of the First Lady delivering platitudes so vague they sound — as a writer on Buzzfeed pointed out — like a ChatGPT-generated wedding toast written by an absent father. Her placid exterior only cracks once, not for the death of her mother or her meeting with an Israeli hostage, but when she sings along to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, her voice is ironically drowned out by Brett Ratner behind the camera.

When the film attempts to pivot to the ‘love story of our lifetime,’ the results are about as romantic as a corporate merger. We see Melania address her husband as ‘Mr. President’ over the phone, while their parental bonding consisting of Donald calling Barron ‘cute’ and Melania confirming, ‘Yeah, I love him.’ The President’s own brand of empathy shines through when he refers to his grieving wife after her mother’s passing as ‘this one,’ before moving to jokes about her being ‘difficult.’ This domestic drama is interspersed with the high-stakes tension of inauguration planning, where the most gripping conflict involves Melania demanding her hat be ‘really sharp’ and selecting gold eggs with caviar for a starter.

Watching the film’s climax — the 2025 commitment to the Constitution — while the country grapples with detention centres and federal violence would be the height of dark comedy if it weren’t so transparently cynical. There is little wonder then that the documentary has been brutally panned by critics in all major publications in the US and UK. “Melania is a documentary that never comes to life, an orchestrated and airbrushed ‘portrait’ that barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial and feels stitched together out of the most innocuous reality show outtakes. Studiously celebratory and purged of drama or politics, it becomes a designed from the top down reality show devoted to shutting reality out,” the review in Variety read.

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“It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. The fun’s not infectious and the guests are a nightmare, and two hours of Melania feels like pure, endless hell,” writes Xan Brooks in The Guardian. Independent, too, minces no words, calling it Melania “a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness” and the documentary, a “ghastly bit of propaganda, hitting cinemas as the streets of America remain filled with the angry and grieving, the vulgar, gilded lifestyle of the Trumps makes them look like Marie Antoinette skulking in her cake-filled chateau.”

Out of step with the national mood

The timing of the documentary has undermined its reception. On January 24, days before the public release, the White House hosted a private, black-tie screening for roughly 70 invited guests. They included Queen Rania of Jordan, Mike Tyson, self-help titan Tony Robbins and while a phalanx of tech overlords: Apple’s Tim Cook, Zoom’s Eric Yuan, NYSE’s Lynn Martin, and AMD’s Lisa Su. Designer Adam Lippes, photographer Ellen von Unwerth and Fiat heiress Azzi Agnelli were also present. The rest of the country was busy mourning federal shootings in Minneapolis.

That same morning, Federal agents in Minneapolis shot a 37-year-old nurse, Alex Pretti, during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation, an incident that sparked nationwide protests and intensified criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices. Earlier in January, another 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, was shot in the wake of Operation Metro Surge, one of the largest immigration enforcement actions in US history to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants, initiated in Minnesota in December 2025.

The January 30 premiere at the Trump-Kennedy centre, which Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezo notably skipped, took place amid the national outrage at the shootings, and the juxtaposition was jarring to say the least. Melania (55) arrived at the premiere in a sleek, buttoned Dolce & Gabbana skirt suit with a slim belt, and President Trump (79) wore a navy-blue suit with a burgundy tie, walking the charcoal-coloured carpet beneath a black-and-white MELANIA backdrop. While they were planned months in advance, both the private screening and the premiere were totally out of step with the national mood.

In an interview with USA TODAY at the premiere, Melania talked about her immigrant background. She moved to the US from Slovenia in 1996 to work as a model and became a citizen in 2006. “I’m an immigrant; I’m coming from a different country,” she said. “I’m very proud to be an American citizen.” It was a striking display of how the American Dream could be infinitely more chic when you’re the one holding the gala, rather than the one waiting for the gates to open.

The cost of doing business

When the documentary opened in approximately 1,500 to 2,000 theatres in the US and Canada, the disconnect between rhetoric and reality became clear. President Trump claimed on Truth Social that tickets were “selling out fast.” Box-office data, however, told a different story. In Palm Beach County, near Mar-a-Lago, roughly 13 percent of seats were filled over opening weekend. In Australia, reported attendance hovered around 4 percent. In London, a flagship Vue cinema sold a single ticket for its premiere screening. The film was also pulled from theatres in South Africa amid allegations of racism.

When questioned about the poor turnout, Ratner dismissed revenue as beside the point, arguing that the film’s value could not be measured financially, a claim that rings hollow given the scale of the investment. Despite early projections of an $8 million to $9 million domestic debut, the documentary is expected to be a big financial loss for Amazon MGM Studios, with estimated total losses reaching $70 million against the $75 million investment. The film faces ‘soft’ international interest and a polarised domestic audience, leading Amazon to look at a Prime Video release within a month to recoup value via streaming.

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Ahead of its release, CNN predicted a “massive flop”, and presales were sufficiently weak to spark rumours of four-walling, a practice in which distributors buy tickets themselves to create the illusion of demand. What’s more, behind-the-scenes accounts from the production paint an equally troubled picture. A large section of the crew regretted working on the film, citing labour issues and a tightly controlled environment. The documentary’s content reflects that constraint. Scenes of Melania discussing preparations, praising her son Barron’s role as first son, or briefly referencing the president’s “sense of humour” offer little insight. The film observes, but it does not interrogate.

Melania will be remembered for its strong criticism. Jimmy Kimmel has referred to Melania Trump as a “European cyborg” and the docu to be a “$75 million bribe” to the Trump family from Amazon. Kimmel joked, “Not since The Terminator has there been this much excitement for a movie about a European cyborg". Satirist Paul Rudnick mocked that the film was more about “counting the millions” than documenting history. Even jokes about a fictional “TUMS-13” rating gained traction, which only show the widespread sense of discomfort the film has evoked. As the lights dim in mostly empty cinemas and memes continue to multiply, the legacy of Melania is secure, not as a documentary of consequence, but as a lavish monument to the art of saying very little, very expensively, courtesy Amazon. Its failure has a lesson for American tech gianst. As Marina Hyde writes in The Guardian, “the cost of doing business” might very soon “cost these guys business”.