First lady Melania Trump’s self-titled documentary is set to rake in $9 million – the best in box office sales for a documentary in a decade.
Amazon shelled out $40 million for the documentary and marketing to ensure “Melania” was a major theatrical success.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, no one expected box office success for a documentary film about the first lady.
“No one saw that coming, with many suggesting Melania was a bomb before it even opened based on empty, or nearly empty, seat maps in cinemas across the country,” The Hollywood Reporter noted.
“The pic is galvanizing conservatives in the South and South-central part of the country, and specifically older females over the age of 55, who made up 72 percent of the opening-day audience. And a stunning 78 percent of all ticket buyers were 55 and older.”
“It’s very rare that documentaries get released in theaters.”
Director Brett Ratner told Breitbart News that he gives the first lady “all the credit” for the movie’s extremely successful box office performance.
“I have to give all the credit to Melania because this was something that she came up with, even, obviously, before she met me,” he said. “The fact that she had hired a feature director like myself to do a documentary was very surprising… But she said to me from day one, I want this to be very cinematic. I want it to have a theatrical release. I want it to live and play in theaters.”
Ratner was skeptical since documentaries aren’t released to movie theaters.
“It’s very rare that documentaries get released in theaters. It’s usually straight to streaming, and even before they were streaming, documentaries were not in movie theaters – very, very rarely. So it was really her vision to have that and to see it through.”
Ratner also attributed the movie’s box office success to conservative women who showed up in theaters in force.
“I think, as planned, we designed this movie to really live and breathe inside a movie theater. You could watch it on streaming down the road, but I think the audience felt that too, and that’s why they showed up. They showed up for the theaters, but from the material, from the campaign, the trailers, you realize, ‘Wow, this is a big screen production. This isn’t just a kind of episodic documentary.'”
“Melania” received a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while receiving a lower critics score of 11%.
Melania and President Donald Trump joined 250 guests at Thursday night’s world premiere in Washington D.C.
Melania will only play exclusively in theaters for 2 weekends before heading to streaming.
