By Bo Erickson and Dawn Chmielewski
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – With tensions in Minneapolis still high and a possible U.S. military strike on Iran looming, movers and shakers in the Trump administration took a timeout on Thursday to attend a lavish event celebrating a big-budget documentary about first lady Melania Trump.
The movie, “Melania,” was financed at an eyebrow-raising $75 million by Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon’s chairman, Jeff Bezos, also contributed to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund earlier this year.
Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to license the film and a related docuseries, which is scheduled to be released later this year on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service. The first lady is one of the producers of the film, which documents the 20 days leading up to Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the family’s return to the White House.
The studio spent another $35 million promoting and distributing the movie, which will be available in about 25 territories outside North America, according to a person familiar with the matter. This week, promotional ads could be seen in places such as London’s Piccadilly Circus.
Amazon, along with the film’s director, Brett Ratner, have rejected suggestions that the studio bought and promoted the film to curry favor with the administration.
“It wasn’t about getting rich,” Ratner told reporters at Thursday’s premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington. “I think the Trumps are wealthy and successful enough,” said Ratner, whose credits as a director include the “Rush Hour” film series with Jackie Chan.
Asked at the event if the Amazon film deal was to curry favor with him and the White House, Trump said that was fake news. “I’m not involved, and it was done with my wife.”
A spokesperson for Amazon told Reuters, “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only – because we think customers are going to love it.”
BLACK, NOT RED, CARPET
The film offers rare access to the deeply private, enigmatic first lady, who has kept a low public profile during her husband’s second term.
The trailer opens on Inauguration Day in January 2025, showing her donning a navy wide-brimmed hat for the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. It also depicts her role as an adviser to the president, including a moment in which she encourages him to emphasize “peacemaker and unifier” in his inaugural address.
The film’s premiere was attended by top Trump administration officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
They strode upon a black – not red – carpet in front of a large backdrop emblazoned with the word “MELANIA” in black-and-white letters as flashbulbs popped.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the cabinet’s attendance was seen as obligatory.
Kennedy said the first lady has “largely been misunderstood. She’s a deep person. She’s deeply concerned about our country.”
The documentary opens in about 1,700 theaters in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, following a robust marketing campaign of the kind typically associated with a major Hollywood release, one that included television ads during the NFL playoff games, billboards and a promotional video projected on the exterior of Las Vegas’s Sphere.
Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, head of documentary film at the University of California Los Angeles, said the promotional budget was well above a typical budget for marketing documentary films, which often rely on reviews and word-of-mouth to attract viewers.
“It’s an extremely high budget for promotion of a documentary,” said Guevara-Flanagan. “It really feels like it’s so much in excess it’s like stuffing it down our throats.”
Box office forecasters predict “Melania” could bring in as much as $5 million on opening weekend.
“The question is, for opening weekend, ‘How much does Donald Trump’s appeal to the public extend to Melania?” said Daniel Loria, senior vice president of The Boxoffice Company, a data analytics firm for cinemas.
(Dawn Chmieleski reported from Los Angeles. Additional reporting by Phil Stewart. Writing by James Oliphant, editing by Ross Colvin and Diane Craft)
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