Prior to release, Amazon MGM’s “Melania” was looking at an opening weekend outside the top 5 on the box office charts, with projections topping out at $5 million and most predictions expecting $3 million.
Instead, the Brett Ratner doc has opened slightly above those expectations, earning a $7 million opening from 1,778 locations that passes the $5 million start for Angel’s 2023 film “After Death” to becoming the highest opening for a non-music documentary in the past ten years. A first glance at the audience data shows that older women in Donald Trump’s support base made this possible.
In box office tracking, a mix of presales, performance of similar films, online interest and audience polls factor into opening weekend projections. Because of that, it can be harder to track interest in a film whose primary audience is among the senior crowd, particularly considering that older audiences are less likely to buy advance tickets even to films they have strong interest in.
So while “Melania” saw extremely low pre-release ticket sales and was critically panned with a 6% Rotten Tomatoes score, opening night audience data shows that a supermajority of those who bought a ticket — a staggering 72% — were women over the age of 55. It is very likely that the vast majority of moviegoers among that cohort bought walk-up tickets rather than order them in advance.
Still, a $7 million opening is far from enough for “Melania” to break even against the highest ever production and marketing spend on a documentary. After a meeting between the Trumps and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in December 2024, Amazon MGM won the bidding war for the film in a $40 million acquisition deal, with a reported $35 million spent on marketing that included popcorn buckets and a marketing stunt on the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Among recent conservative films, the closest comp for “Melania” is the 2024 biopic “Reagan,” which opened to $7.9 million in 2024 and grossed $30 million domestically from a run that had 2,754 locations, about 1,000 more than “Melania.” A similar figure, which would only come from exceptionally strong legs in red states against upcoming films like “Wuthering Heights” and “Goat,” is likely the best possible theatrical result for “Melania.”
That means “Melania” needs to not only leg out in theaters but also leg out on post-theatrical platforms just to recoup its costs. Amazon MGM distribution chief Kevin Wilson believes that will be the case.
“We’re very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response, with early box office for ‘Melania’ exceeding our expectations,” Wilson said on Sunday. This momentum is an important first step in what we see as a long-tail lifecycle for both the film and the forthcoming docuseries, extending well beyond the theatrical window and into what we believe will be a significant run for both on our service.”
“We are confident in the long-term value this rollout will deliver to customers both in theaters, and for years to come on Prime Video,” he added.
As one might expect from a documentary about the First Lady of a divisive president, the top ten markets for “Melania” nearly all came from states carried by Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, namely Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Florida, the latter of which had five cities in the top 10.
Dallas was the top grossing city for “Melania,” followed by Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers and Atlanta.
Curiously enough, the last film in the top 10 markets for “Melania” is Minneapolis, where tens of thousands of residents have protested Trump and his immigration policies after U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were killed by border patrol officials. It is the only city in the top 10 markets for the film in a state carried by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.
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