Melania documentary bombs at the Australian box office, ranking a dismal 33

Melania may have exceeded box office expectations in the US, but Australian audiences wanted very little to do with the vanity project documentary.

At the local box office, Melania sold just over $32,000 in tickets, and was ranked a paltry 33rd on the list of most watched films over the weekend. It had a per-theatre average of $1100.

In 32nd position was Wicked: For Good, which was released more than three months ago and is already available to watch at home. The top three movies were Iron Lung ($1.67 million), Marty Supreme ($1.53 million) and Send Help ($1.08 million).

The Melania feature documentary is being played in most Australian capital cities through the Hoyts and Palace cinema chains. On Friday afternoon, a cursory count across the first sessions in each cinema showed the film had pre-sold roughly 250 seats in total.

In the US, Melania took in almost $US8 million, which is the highest opening gross for a documentary in more than a decade. Sales were over-indexed in Republican-voting counties and more than 78 per cent of audiences were over 55 years old.

However, the film cost Amazon, which is distributing through its studio arm MGM and will eventually hit its streaming service Prime Video, $US75 million ($US40 million for the rights, and $US35 million for marketing).

That is an enormous budget for a documentary film, reportedly the most expensive ever. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos won a bidding war in January 2025. The New York Times reported that Disney had been the second highest bidder but its offer was considerably less at $US14 million.

The most commercially successful documentary of all time was Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which had a production budget of $US6 million and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, spent $US15 million on marketing which included the cost of an Oscar campaign.

Fahrenheit 9/11 ended its box office run at $US222 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. Al Gore’s climate change feature documentary, An Inconvenient Truth made $US49 million worldwide.

Melania, which was not screened for critics or media, has been belted in reviews. It has a score of 10 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, aggregated from 20 professional critics.

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks called it a “gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest”, referencing the Holocaust drama which followed the family of the Auschwitz commandant, who lived idyllic rural lives on the other side of the concentration camp while ignoring the atrocities next door.

Melania, which followed the again First Lady in the 20 days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, was directed by Brett Ratner, a filmmaker exiled from Hollywood in 2017 after six women, including actors Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denied.

On the same day as the release of Melania, Ratner appeared in the newly released tranche of documents and photographs from the so-called Epstein files. In the picture, he is seen sitting on a couch embracing a woman, next to them is Jeffrey Epstein.

It is not suggested Ratner has done anything wrong. He has not addressed his presence in that photo.