Brett Ratner’s Melania documentary exceeded box office predictions on its opening day Friday, grossing $2.9 million from 1,778 theaters.
Analysts had expected the controversial film to make between $1 million and $5 million through its opening weekend.
Instead, as Variety reports, it is on course to bank around $8.1 million.
Although the film has performed better than expected, it is still unlikely to recoup the $40 million Amazon MGM paid for it. Amazon reportedly spent an additional $35 million to market the film.
The film has generally been panned by critics. On reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, it has a score of just 6% from critics but the site has been flooded with audience reviews that are 99% positive.
In a one star review for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “Perhaps Melania is merely a piece of post-modern post-entertainment. After all, it is transparently not a documentary.”
Hilton continues: “Melania spends most scenes playing a staged version of herself, and shots of the first lady are composed with all the deliberateness Ratner brought to his work on X-Men: The Last Stand. This is somewhere between reality TV and pure fiction.”
Wired magazine reported that Melania screenings at the Mann Plymouth Grand 15 theater in Minnesota appear to have been canceled. The theater is located in Hennepin County, Minnesota, an area that is experiencing unrest after the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti
Speaking to reporters at the film’s premiere at the Kennedy Center on Thursday, President Donald Trump played down reports of weak ticket sales for the film.
“It’s a very tough business in theaters selling movie tickets after Covid,” he said.
“I think this will do unbelievable — streaming and everything. Theaters are a different world.”
Melania will stream on Prime Video at a later date.
The project marks the American filmmaking return of Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, who moved to Israel following multiple sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. He has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any offenses.
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According to a Rolling Stone report, two-thirds of crew members asked to have their names removed from the film’s credits. One crew member described Ratner as “slimy” and Melania as “boring,” but “totally nice,” the magazine reported.
International sales do not look likely to add much to Melania’s total box office take. Tim Richards, the chief executive of Vue, one of the U.K.’s biggest movie theater operators, revealed that early ticket sales had been “soft.”
Meanwhile, in South Africa, distributor Filmfinity has cancelled the film’s theatrical run for what it called “political reasons.”