Headlines Are Calling the Melania Movie a Surprise Box-Office “Success.” Don’t Believe Them.

by AGOTFAN

24 Comments

  1. >Deadline called its opening the strongest for a documentary in a decade, and the New York Times wrote that its $8 million opening was 60 percent above industry predictions. By Sunday, however, the latter number had been revised drastically downward, from $8 million to barely over $7 million, and as for the former statistic, it only holds if you don’t categorize concert movies as nonfiction, since it’s nowhere in the ballpark of The Eras Tour’s $123 million.

  2. Streisand effect. Y’all kept saying MELANIA MELANIA MELANIA and did more marketing then the actual film studio. If it wasn’t for Reddit I would’ve never even know this came out.

  3. it cost 75 million dollars to make and market. its got its fanbase, sure, but I doubt it’s clearing even 25% of that

  4. yeah the psychosis around this film in the last day acting as if $7M (possibly less with actuals) is a success is wild. it has to be purely based on the $3M predictions that got passed around, because $7M for a wide release of a documentary (about a well known subject) is not a success, and in a vaccuum, $7M for a wide release of a documentary is fine but there’s not much to compare it to given there hasn’t been a ton of wide release documentaires in the last decade! (which again is absurd that they’re using this to call it “the biggest documentary release in a decade..”), because okay, what are other docs are there? (i assume we’re not counting Taylor Swift’s or concert movies either)

    Mind you I keep saying that these movies have an audience – they always have. It’s the Angel Studios/Faith/MAGA crowd and the cult crowd (the ones who pushed Dinesh D’souza’s insane ‘documentaries’ to $10-15M domestic)

  5. LazyRiverHomicide on

    Also ignores all the money they were paying people to see this. Wasn’t it like $50 per person?

  6. You’d think this was a new Star Wars or something with how much this sub keeps talking about it. It’s just a documentary that had a decent little weekend, no more, no less. Move on.

  7. napoelonDynaMighty on

    Two things can be true.

    It can be a high grossing (not netting) film for a documentary. If you’re just pitting it against other recent documentaries.

    But it can also be a colossal failure due to the ridiculous 40 million dollar budget and marketing

    I think the way they’re looking at it is Roger Moore’s last documentary ***Fahrenheit 11/9*** (The one about how Trump sucks) made 7 million in its entire theatrical run. But then again it also had a BUDGET of 5 million.

    The Melania movie is a bomb, but it’s bombing in a way that’s allowing those behind it to save a little face. And it’s disallowing the internet from laughing out loud to the degree that people were expecting to.

  8. NepheliLouxWarrior on

    Holy fuck I wouldn’t have even KNOWN that a Melania movie out if it weren’t for Reddit complaining about it every 10 fucking seconds. Jesus Christ does every single thing have to be a crusade?

  9. CausticAvenger on

    Two things can be true: this is very impressive weekend box office for a narrative documentary, and still a huge flop due to its budget.

  10. Accomplished-Head449 on

    They’re sucking up for that 25% state refund and removals of that 100% tariff. So be it

  11. It’s weird how made trades are spinning this film as a success, but a lot of them were also trying to downplay the performance of *Sinners* last year. Make it make sense.

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