Melania Trump documentary set for tough opening day with reports of London flop, mostly unfilled seats
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Social media users have circulated images of booking screens for documentary Melania, showing entire theatres unfilled.
PHOTO: AFP
In a sign of just how badly the big-budget documentary about US First Lady Melania Trump could flop, only one ticket was reportedly sold for a 3.10pm screening of the film on Jan 30 at a marquee theatre in London.
The eponymous film Melania – bankrolled with the financial heft of American billionaire Jeff Bezos – is said to be landing in theatres with the soft thud of a designer stiletto heel on deep carpet.
Amazon’s MGM Studios paid a reported US$40 million (S$51 million) to license the film and a related docuseries
The result, at least judging from widely shared ticketing screenshots, appears to be a national experiment in negative space.
The film promises rare access to the famously private First Lady, chronicling the 20 days leading up to her husband Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the family’s return to the White House.
The movie will open in roughly 1,700 theatres across the United States and Canada on Jan 30.
Box-office forecasts for opening weekend sales have ranged from cautiously grim – around US$1 million – to heroically optimistic – as much as US$5 million.
“It’s an extremely high budget for the promotion of a documentary,” Associate Professor Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, who heads documentary film at the University of California, Los Angeles, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “It really feels like it’s so much in excess, it’s like stuffing it down our throats.”
If so, audiences appear to have politely closed their mouths.
On social media, users circulated images of booking screens showing entire theatres unfilled.
Late-night talk-show host Stephen Colbert offered what may be the sharpest capsule review: “It’s a real peek behind the curtain at a woman picking out curtains.”
A Vogue correspondent, after viewing the trailer, wrote: “Somehow, I know less about this woman’s life than I did before I watched this trailer.”
A more savage line – “If they showed this film on a plane, people would still walk out” – spread widely online, though it was incorrectly attributed to news outlet Variety.
British news publisher The Guardian reported that just one ticket was sold for the first 3.10pm screening of Melania on Jan 30 at the London flagship theatre of Vue, a large cinema chain. Later counts suggested a surge to 13.
Online commenters reacted with the sort of joy usually reserved for sports upsets and cake fails.
“Who bought the ticket? It may be a collector’s item,” one person wrote.
Another chimed in: “Just checked our local cinema and not 1 sold either. Put on in the smallest cinema room too, with only 44 seats.”
One more person added: “I’ve just checked myself. There’s just the odd one seat, and on another day, two seats. Oh my god, how bad is this?”
Wired magazine, in an admirably forensic act of cultural anthropology, reviewed nearly 1,400 showtimes across hundreds of US theatres and found just two sold-out screenings for Jan 30 – both discounted matinees.
At the time of writing, Empire 25 in New York City, one of AMC Entertainment’s flagship movie theatres, had sold nine seats for its first screening, at 7.30pm on Jan 30.
Cavernous emptiness
Some reports have claimed that Republican-affiliated groups have been buying blocks of tickets, then distributing them for free or at steep discounts, in an effort to avoid the optics of cavernous emptiness.
“This isn’t organic demand,” Mr Rob Shuter, a writer on media platform Substack, quoted an insider as saying. “It’s about optics. Empty theatres look terrible.”
Mrs Trump, for her part, has remained publicly upbeat.
After an in-house White House screening
It was, at minimum, a room where every seat was filled.
