Melania Trump’s controversial Amazon documentary has received a streaming release date for March 9, just over a month after it premiered at selected theaters worldwide.
Melania, which has been widely panned and branded a vanity project by critics, follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration. It will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video after Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM studios paid $40 million for the film.
In its first two weeks in theaters, Melania earned $13.35 million domestically, exceeding box office projections thanks, in part, to organized groups of Republican women who made up a large portion of the audience.
In the movie, Melania meets with stylists, interior designers and political allies before she is seen hand-in-hand with her husband at his swearing-in ceremony. She delivers voiceovers about her love of style (“I love black-and-white”) and about her relationship with her husband (“People have tried to murder him, slander him and incarcerate him — I am so very proud of him.”)
In January, the Trump family celebrated the release of the film by hosting a special black-tie premiere at the White House that sent VIP guests home with monochrome cookies bearing the name “MELANIA,” branded popcorn buckets and limited-edition copies of her memoir.
An official premiere took place days later at the recently renamed Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
Melania had been marketed as an insider look at the most mysterious and opaque woman in global politics, and her relationship with her husband, but critics have argued that the film is a piece of promotional material for the Trump administration.
The film has been critically panned across the board, receiving a one-star review from The Independent’s Nick Hilton, who 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.”
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Although the film has performed better than expected at the box office, 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. It is believed to have cost more than just about any documentary in history.
The film’s price tag has prompted industry speculation that Amazon made the purchase to get close to U.S. President Donald Trump. The project marked the return of Rush Hour director Ratner, who moved to Israel following multiple sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. He has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes.
Since the film’s release, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and director Paul Thomas Anderson made headlines when they condemned the use of the score of their 2017 film Phantom Thread on the soundtrack.
Producer Marc Beckman has since revealed that Guns N’ Roses, Grace Jones and the Prince estate all blocked the use of their music in the film, citing political reasons.
