{"id":44399,"date":"2026-02-01T23:31:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T23:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/melania-rakes-in-7-million-making-it-one-of-the-highest-grossing-documentaries-of-the-last-few-years\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T23:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T23:31:36","slug":"melania-rakes-in-7-million-making-it-one-of-the-highest-grossing-documentaries-of-the-last-few-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/melania-rakes-in-7-million-making-it-one-of-the-highest-grossing-documentaries-of-the-last-few-years\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Melania&#8217; rakes in $7 million, making it one of the highest-grossing documentaries of the last few years"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/697fa698a645d11881886948?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Melania Trump\"\/><figcaption>Melania Trump&#039;s Amazon-backed documentary debuted in theaters on January 30.<\/p>\n<p>Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>&quot;Melania: Twenty Days to History&quot; debuted in theaters on January 30.<\/li>\n<li>The doc follows Melania Trump, the US first lady, ahead of Trump&#039;s inauguration.<\/li>\n<li>As of Sunday, the doc has grossed over $7 million in ticket sales.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A glimpse into Melania Trump&#039;s often-obscured personal life has drawn at least some fans to the box office, earning over $7 million during the opening weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Data from The Numbers, a movie financial analysis website, shows that &quot;Melania: Twenty Days to History&quot; is far and away the highest-grossing documentary of 2026 so far.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, &quot;Holding Liat,&quot; a documentary released in January, is the second highest earner at $28,000 as of Sunday, according to The Numbers.<\/p>\n<p>One of the highest-grossing documentaries of 2025 was &quot;Becoming Led Zeppelin,&quot; which earned about $10.4 million at the domestic box office.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It proves that an original idea which is executed with deliberate beauty is embraced by fans and moviegoers, regardless of political affiliation,&quot; Marc Beckman, Melania&#039;s senior advisor and agent, told Business Insider in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The documentary, which premiered on January 30, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the days leading up to President Donald Trump&#039;s 2025 inauguration from the first lady&#039;s perspective. Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to license the documentary and an additional docuseries on Prime Video. Brett Ratner, known for the &quot;Rush Hour&quot; franchise before sexual misconduct allegations derailed his career in 2017, directed the documentary.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;With exclusive footage of critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments, &#039;Melania&#039; showcases Mrs. Trump&#039;s return to one of the world&#039;s most powerful roles,&quot; an Amazon press release said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the early box-office sales, the film has earned less-than-stellar reviews from critics and was review-bombed on Letterboxd. Business Insider&#039;s Peter Kafka described the documentary as &quot;dull,&quot; but said that it could resonate with superfans of the Trump family.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The best way I can describe this one is something akin to a wedding video: <em>Maybe<\/em> the subjects of the video will want to watch it (Melania looks, unsurprisingly, like a woman who used to be a model; her husband seems notably more spry than he does now, a year after it was filmed),&quot; Kafka wrote. &quot;It&#039;s hard to imagine anyone else will.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melania Trump&#039;s Amazon-backed documentary debuted in theaters on January 30. Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images &quot;Melania: Twenty Days to History&quot; debuted in theaters on January 30. The doc follows Melania Trump, the US first lady, ahead of Trump&#039;s inauguration. As of Sunday, the doc has grossed over $7 million in ticket sales. A glimpse into Melania Trump&#039;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}