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/

[M.10rda]

Eh!

[M.10rda]

The plot thickens... block ticket purchases/giveaways for MELANIA are no longer speculative. Here's proof of one:
https://meidasnews.com/news/gop-candidate-hoping-for-trumps-endorsement-gave-away-free-melania-tickets?cdmc=39D6wCOpDAz4ny0J4Sf3EZLXaWq&refcode2=39D6wCOpDAz4ny0J4Sf3EZLXaWq&refcodecdmc=39D6wCOpDAz4ny0J4Sf3EZLXaWq

Less of a smoking gun, yet related:
https://meidasnews.com/news/exclusive-white-house-advisor-pushed-bulk-sales-for-melania-movie

One more time: $7 million opening weekend for a documentary is nothing to cast shade upon.
EXCEPT - docs rarely get released as widely as MELANIA.
Some outlets report MELANIA played on 1800 this weekend - but I'm unclear on whether that's just North America or international.
I tried to recall another documentary with such a wide opening. I remember FAHRENHEIT 9/11 opening pretty wide in 2004 (it played at the suburban multiplex that I managed, owned by a staunch Republican, anyway). I couldn't easily ascertain how many screens FAHRENHEIT 9/11 played on, but it grossed $24 million its opening weekend. Of course, that was in the pre-streaming age........
But anyway. If MELANIA grossed $7million on 1800 screens - that's an average of $3,888 per screen. That would be very good at my small art house triplex from '99-'03 (MEMENTO would often gross $4-$6k a screen per weekend... in its first 2-3 months... then $1-2k per weekend thereafter). $4k per screen @ the multiplex in '03-'08 would be less impressive. Also remember tickets were $4-$6 per ticket in '99, maybe up to $8 or so in '08. So that was more bodies per showtime per weekend.
MELANIA is a 108 minute movie, so it would've probably gotten 4 Friday showtimes and 5 Saturdays and Sundays. Let's say therefore it played 14 times per screen on many of its screens this weekend.
That means it grossed $277.71 per showtime on each of those screens. $277.71 for one show would be okay-to-slow for a movie back in 2003. $1K+ in tickets to one show was cookin'! Again - roughly $5 per ticket = 200 people in my theater, and that was pretty good!
Today tickets probably cost... on average... $12?
$277.71 divided by $12 = about 23 people per show of MELANIA this weekend. Average multiplex theater seats 200-300. Some are much smaller, some may be much larger. My screens were mostly in the 250 range, w/ one 500-seater @ the triplex. I forget how big the biggest ones were at the multiplex, but probably only 350-400. So 23 people in a single show... wasn't nothin', but also wasn't anything to get excited about. You wouldn't send in extra ushers after the show or anything.

Some showings of MELANIA this weekend were certainly full. Some were certainly empty. If only 23 people ON AVERAGE saw each show... clearly "sold-out" screenings with standing-room only capacity (as was claimed this week on Fox News) were an outlier. Mathematically, half of all shows were attended by 23 or fewer patrons.

Again, working w/ uncertain numbers here for the US, but in the UK...
It played on 155 screens. (I dunno if that's on top of the 1800 or included in the 1800.)
It grossed $42,000 US.
It was #29 on the UK charts for the weekend. 
It averaged $277.97 (US) per screen. That would be a HUGE FLOP at my arthouse in 2003... that movie wouldn't be back for a second week. 

[M.10rda]

Here's a great article analyzing ALL this weekend's box office reports - including though not limited to MELANIA:
https://tombrueggemann.substack.com/p/five-box-office-results-this-weekend

This author is also skeptical about MELANIA's, err, "legs".

Also, Chris Pratt in MERCY (also from Amazon/MGM) looks like another big ol' bomb. So this has been a fine two weeks for MovieBezos. And good!

On the other hand... the Charli XCX mockumentary is... on the kind of fire that I would've been THRILLED to shout in my usually-undercrowded movie theaters!  Grossed $425,000 on FOUR (4) SCREENS. Wow, cinema managers... better order a lot more raw corn!!!!!!! 

UPDATE: I slept on the biggest news re: this thread, because I had no idea what IRON LUNG even was...
Yeah, the #1 movie of the weekend is Sam Raimi & Disney's flick, but the #2 movie is a $3 million indie that opened w/ an $18 million gross... more than 200% MELANIA's weekend gross on probably 1/30th MELANIA's budget. Maybe Bezos should hire Markiplier!