Some sort of noteworthy Event for this website...

[Rev. Powell]

We make fun, but the movie grossed $7 million in its opening week, making it the #3 movie of the week. 

I've heard reports of people buying tickets then offering to pay others $50 plus their ticket if they'll sit through the entire movie. 

There's far more tickets being sold than there are people actually watching. 

Don't kid yourself. If 10% of all Americans are die hard MAGA, which is the low end of estimates, there are 33,000,000 potential viewers, more than enough to make it a hit.

[Rev. Powell]

How did this cost 75m? It was director Ratner following Melania with only a camera, right?


(Brett Ratner with friends)

I think most of that money was legal bribery.

[M.10rda]

Again, at the risk of denying the first lady her due, $7m is good for a documentary's opening weekend but less good for the $75m+ budget. (Again, for Claws and anyone else joining in progress - that's $40m to Melania herself and $35m advertising, plus whatever they paid Ratner and the rest of the crew and post-production staff). It's also pretty weak for a film w/ so much money spent on promo AND a conservative pedigree... films like SOUND OF FREEDOM might start slow and grow in ticket revenue due to word of mouth and commentator support. However after all the pre-opening advertising, it's hard to imagine (particularly w/ the reviews) that significantly more people will go to theaters in week 2 to see MELANIA than saw it in week 1... in other words, it doesn't seem likely to be a grower. If people want to see it and they haven't this week, I suspect they'll wait for it to be included free w/ their Prime subscription. (I guess Prime is fine w/ that, too, but it will be hard for the president to brag about a $10-ish million total box office gross against a $80-ish million dollar budget.)

[Rev. Powell]

https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/melania-doc-white-women-red-states-drove-box-office-1236648382/