Since its release in late January, Melania Trump’s documentary made a significant drop of 67% in the box office, yet audience reviews remained contradictorily high.
“Melania,” the film that follows the First Lady’s life in the 20 days leading up to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration, dropped from third to tenth in the U.S. box office within its first two weeks of release. Meanwhile, the documentary scored 11% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, but boasted a whopping 99% on its Popcornmeter.
The discrepancy in reviews led to speculations about potential tampering with audience scores, but Rotten Tomatoes’s parent company, Versant, denied these allegations.
“There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the ‘Melania’ documentary,” Versant told Variety. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
Thomas Reynolds, a former state representative, and practitioner in residence in the human sciences department, said the film raised a different set of ethical concerns for him.
“This culture of corruption suggests that government decisions are not being made in the public interest and will surely undermine the people’s already declining trust in their government,” Reynolds said.
According to Forbes, Amazon funded the movie with roughly $40 million for film rights and $35 million for release and promotion. The high funding of the film made some critics question whether Amazon’s funding of it was due to an attempt for Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, to find favor with President Trump and his family.
The Guardian reported that the film’s top performing territories are the UK, Australia and Slovenia, the country where Melania Trump herself is from.
“Iron Lung,” an independent horror sci-fi film written, directed and starred in by YouTube personality Mark “Markiplier” Fischback, was released on the same day as “Melania.” His horror flick grossed more than double the amount of the documentary both during the opening weekend and in total.
Contrary to the documentary, Fischback told Deadline that he didn’t spend anything to market the self-produced film, having relied on the fanbase he built and the reach gained through his career on YouTube.
“But it’s not just a numbers thing, it is a relationship,” Fischback said. “That’s why I emphasize the long run that I’ve had — from nothing, to now. It’s important to emphasize because that is a relationship that you’ve built with some people since nearly the beginning.”
