How much has Melania movie made

Checked on February 5, 2026
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Executive summary

The documentary Melania opened to roughly $7 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales during its first weekend, with outlets reporting figures from $7.0m to $7.1m and a final studio estimate of $7.04m for the debut frame [1] box-office-records-with-7-1-million-opening-474492/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[2] [3]. That theatrical haul is notable for a non-concert documentary, but it sits far short of the roughly $75 million Amazon MGM reportedly spent to acquire and market the film, leaving its theatrical revenue insufficient to cover studio outlays [4] [5] [6].

1. Opening weekend: a consistent $7 million headline

Multiple mainstream box-office reports converged on an opening-weekend gross near $7 million: studio and industry estimates widely cited $7.0m (AP, BBC, CNBC), some trade tallies put it at $7.04m, and a few outlets rounded to $7.1m — all reflecting the same conclusion that the film significantly outperformed earlier low projections [3] [7] [4] [1] [2].

2. Context: biggest non-music doc debut in a decade, but not break-even

Analysts framed the debut as the strongest opening for a non-concert documentary in more than ten years, yet also stressed that the studio’s financial picture remains troubled because Amazon MGM reportedly paid $40 million for distribution rights and spent an additional ~$35 million on marketing — a combined outlay of about $75 million that the opening weekend does not substantially dent [4] [5] [6].

3. Beyond the headline: audience profile and box-office geography

Data cited by outlets show the film’s ticket buyers skewed older and female — with Comscore/EntTelligence indicating large shares of viewers were over 55 and women — and that the film overperformed in conservative-leaning U.S. markets such as Texas and Florida, factors that shaped its theatrical footprint and explain pockets of strong turnout [4] [6] [5].

4. Skepticism and controversy about how those numbers were achieved

Box-office experts flagged unusual ticket-sale patterns that preceded release, prompting questions about bulk purchases or promotional giveaways that could have inflated box-office tallies; reporting by The Daily Beast summarized Tom Brueggemann’s analysis and mentioned investigations into coordinated promotional pushes from pro-Trump faith groups [8]. Those concerns offer an alternative explanation for why weekend grosses exceeded early forecasts.

5. Political and corporate subtext around the film’s financing and release

Critics and some reporters have posited that Amazon’s high bid and lavish campaign might be serving political or reputational aims beyond immediate box-office returns, a claim the company denies; outlets noted scrutiny about whether the deal was purely commercial given the reported $40m acquisition and the White House- and tech-industry–linked preview events [7] [6] [5].

6. What “how much it has made” does — and does not — mean now

If the user’s question is strictly “how much has Melania movie made,” the best-supported public figure is the opening-weekend theatrical gross of roughly $7 million in North America [3] [1] [4]. Reporting to date shows limited international/ancillary totals in the public record here; some sources and aggregators (e.g., The Numbers, Wikipedia) reference broader cumulative figures but those entries either summarize later totals or cite disputed numbers and must be treated cautiously without corroborating studio box-office statements [9] [10].

7. Bottom line: impressive for a doc opening, inadequate to cover costs so far

Financially, the film’s opening is a headline-making documentary success, but on the simple arithmetic of theatrical revenue versus reported acquisition-plus-marketing costs, the theatrical receipts so far fall far short of making the film profitable for Amazon MGM — a point underscored across business coverage [5] [4] [6].

Want to dive deeper?
How do studios calculate break-even for documentaries after acquisition and marketing costs?
What evidence has been published about alleged bulk ticket purchases or coordinated promotions for the Melania documentary?
How have past politically adjacent films performed financially compared with their acquisition and marketing costs?