President Donald Trump continued to boast about wife Melania Trump’s Amazon MGM-backed documentary following its theatrical release, but joked there’s “not room in one family for two stars.”
Speaking Thursday at the Board of Peace event in Washington, D.C., the president pointed to the film’s box office performance. “Melania,” directed by Brett Ratner, pulled in $7 million in its opening weekend and chronicles the 20 days leading up to Trump’s second presidential inauguration.
“She has a very successful movie out right now, like number one. Can you believe this?” Trump said. “Big movie star, and I always say it’s trouble, because I always say there’s not room in one family for two stars.”
“I told her that we can’t have two stars in one family, so I don’t know what that means, but it’s not, it’s not good,” Trump added.
Trump has promoted the film at the White House, on social media and on the international stage. But during his latest remarks — delivered at the inaugural meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace,” surrounded by world leaders in Washington — his enthusiasm carried a hint of playful envy. Critics, meanwhile, have dismissed the project as an Amazon favor.
“The theaters are all packed. Women, especially, they go back, and they see it two or three times, four times,” Trump said.
He isn’t entirely off base. Although “Melania” generated minimal advance ticket sales and earned a dismal 10% Rotten Tomatoes score, opening-night audience data indicates that 72% of ticket buyers were women 55 and older. Given the weak presales, it’s likely most in that demographic purchased tickets at the box office rather than ahead of time.
The film’s $7 million opening weekend may seem meager compared with its $40 million acquisition cost — reportedly the highest ever paid for a documentary — but the debut still ranks among the stronger recent starts for a genre that has largely faded from theaters: the political documentary.
For TheWrap, William Bibbiani thought he “took one for the team” having to suffer through the film.
“Brett Ratner’s tasteless, tedious, criminally shallow propaganda puff piece ‘Melania‘ is nearly two hours of self-congratulatory torture,” he wrote. “The film records the 20-day build-up to Donald Trump’s second inauguration from the perspective of First Lady Melania Trump, and I have no idea why she was okay with this movie being released, because Brett Ratner couldn’t find the humanity in a funeral.”
