Can ‘Melania’ Open?

On top of the $40 million Amazon ponied up for Brett Ratner’s docu-hagiography, the studio is spending another $35 million to open it in 27 countries, including a splashy Kennedy Center premiere to be attended by top executives. But for all the expense, Melania is for an audience of one.

Still, despite that low box office ceiling, Amazon is putting some outsize muscle behind Melania, which is getting at least some theaters in 27 countries. Photo: Muse Films/Amazon MGM Studios

Matthew Belloni

January 23, 2026

Have you seen the early numbers for the Melania movie? National Research Group put out a new forecast today for the infamous—sorry, inspirational—Melania Trump documentary, executive produced by the first lady herself and directed by Brett Ratner, for which Amazon MGM Studios paid a perfectly normal, totally reasonable $40 million. The movie is expected to gross around $5 million in the U.S. and Canada over the weekend of January 30 in about 1,400 or 1,500 theaters, per NRG. (I’m told Amazon’s internal projections are all over the place.) Presales are unsurprisingly falling fairly strictly along red/blue lines.