It should come as no surprise that Amazon\u2019s documentary \u201cMelania,\u201d about First Lady Melania Trump, grossed $7 million at the box office over the weekend, making it the highest opening for a non-music documentary in over a decade.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not because \u201cMelania\u201d is an exquisitely made, informative documentary. It\u2019s not even a documentary.<\/p>\n
More from IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Instead, it falls in the category of glossy advertisement or unconvincing propaganda film with a multimillion-dollar music licensing budget. Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million for the rights to film. That offer came with a jaw-dropping $35 million marketing budget, which Amazon spent while also cutting 16,000 corporate jobs. \u00a0<\/p>\n The film is the latest streamer-funded, carefully choreographed, boring, celebrity puff piece being branded as a documentary. Previous examples of documentaries in this category<\/a> include \u201cMichael Jackson\u2019s This Is It,\u201d \u201cWith Love, Meghan,\u201d and, most recently, \u201cVictoria Beckham,\u201d a Netflix docuseries. (To be fair, all three of those documentaries were far more revealing than \u201cMelania\u201d; the only thing that one learns about Melania Trump during her 104-minute infomercial is that her favorite song is Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cBillie Jean.\u201d)<\/p>\n But the merits of Brett Ratner\u2019s \u201cMelania\u201d don\u2019t matter. The film is and will continue to be a box office hit because anti-woke, conservative, and faith-based documentaries thrive theatrically.<\/p>\n Take Matt Walsh\u2019s 2024 \u201cAm I Racist?\u201d \u2014 a right-leaning film that tears into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The film was that year\u2019s highest-grossing documentary, earning $12 million at the box office. That same year, a documentary titled \u201cVindicating Trump\u201d earned $1.3 million theatrically, which for any documentary these days is a lot of money. \u201cVindicating Trump\u201d was the sixth highest-grossing documentary in 2024.<\/p>\n Over a decade ago, before the Trump era, conservative filmmaker Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s \u201c2016: Obama\u2019s America\u201d and \u201cAmerica: Imagine the World Without Her\u201d grossed $33 million and $14 million at the box office, respectively.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been over 20 years since progressive documentaries were box-office juggernauts. In 2004, Michael Moore\u2019s Academy Award-winning film \u201cFahrenheit 9\/11,\u201d a searing look into the George W. Bush administration and the War on Terror, grossed $119,194,771 worldwide, making it the highest-grossing documentary of all time.<\/p>\n \u2018Fahrenheit 9\/11\u2019\u00a9Lions Gate\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n In 2005, Davis Guggenheim\u2019s Oscar-winning feature documentary \u201cMarch of the Penguins,\u201d about global warming, earned $77,437,223 worldwide. That is in stark contrast to the 2025 Oscar-winning feature documentary \u201cNo Other Land,\u201d<\/a> about the occupied Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta, which grossed $3.6 million worldwide. Other recent Oscar-winning documentaries, like \u201c20 Days in Mariupol\u201d and \u201cNavalny,\u201d earned just $35,000 and $107,000 worldwide, respectively.<\/p>\n What the documentary industry should be worried about is what the box office success of \u201cMelania\u201d means for filmmakers motivated to make complex nonfiction films with a worldview that disrupt the status quo and have the potential to offend President Trump and his MAGA base. Movies not like \u201cMelania.\u201d<\/p>\n Eight years ago, during \u201cthe golden age of documentary,\u201d streamers like Amazon made it clear that although they were corporate behemoths, they weren\u2019t worried about Trump, who was serving his first term as president. In 2020, Amazon reportedly spent $5 million for global rights to Garrett Bradley\u2019s documentary \u201cTime,\u201d<\/a> about a Louisiana woman\u2019s 20-year effort to secure her husband\u2019s release from prison.<\/p>\n That same year, the company released the documentary \u201cAll In: The Fight for Democracy\u201d about Stacey Abrams, the first Black woman to become a major-party gubernatorial nominee in the United States. In 2019, the streamer acquired the worldwide rights to the documentary \u201cMayor Pete,\u201d which followed democrat Pete Buttigieg on his presidential campaign trail, and in 2016 the company, owned by Jeff Bezos, acquired exclusive streaming rights to Raoul Peck\u2019s \u201cI Am Not Your Negro,\u201d a documentary about late author James Baldwin who, in the film, describes the depressing state of American race relations. Both \u201cTime\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m Not Your Negro\u201d received Academy Award nominations.<\/p>\n But things changed last year when not only Amazon, but also Paramount and Disney, went after the rights to \u201cMelania.\u201d It was a clear and deliberate signal to the documentary industry that they would not offend Donald Trump or his MAGA base with progressive documentaries.<\/p>\n \u2018I Am Not Your Negro\u2019Magnolia Pictures<\/p>\n Last month at the Sundance Film Festival, documentary filmmakers and producers discovered<\/a>, according to multiple sources, that Amazon wasn\u2019t in the market to acquire and commission any documentaries. Not surprisingly, the company\u2019s 2026 budget for nonfiction fare has been used in its entirety to produce and release \u201cMelania.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s absence at Sundance is another blow to an industry that has been suffering to stay afloat<\/a>. Not only are traditional buyers like HBO not buying or commissioning as many documentaries as they did a decade ago, but budgets across the board have also been slashed. Whole documentary divisions have been eliminated or consolidated. A24 shut down its documentary filmmaking department in May 2025.<\/p>\n In January, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting shut down after the Trump administration and Congress voted to defund the organization. CPB is the entity behind PBS, a cornerstone of the doc marketplace.<\/p>\n Then there is tech billionaire Jeff Skoll, the founder and chair of the former socially conscious powerhouse production company Participant Media. Together with the late Diane Weyermann, Skoll produced and helped fund numerous documentaries like \u201cAn Inconvenient Truth \u201d and \u201cRBG\u201d that fed the public\u2019s appetite for thought-provoking subject matter. In 2024, Skoll not only closed Participant but also hosted a Donald Trump inauguration victory rally<\/a>.<\/p>\n Currently, the majority of indie documentary filmmakers are relying on an unsustainable self-distribution model<\/a> and the service-deal marketplace.<\/p>\n In Park City, documentary filmmakers, producers, and cinematographers networked, hoping to land a job or at the very least, get a lead on a potential job opportunity. But the writing is on the wall. The future of socially minded or politically progressive documentaries is in jeopardy, and there isn\u2019t a left-leaning version of Jeff Bezos to swoop down and save the industry.<\/p>\n Only so many documentary filmmakers and producers can be hired to make more nonfiction films for streamers about celebrities, cults, and true crime. Celebrated documentary filmmakers and producers are turning to reality television for work. Some had to work with Ratner on \u201cMelania\u201d to keep financially afloat. According to Rolling Stone<\/a>, two-thirds of the crew members who worked on \u201cMelania\u201d requested that their names not be formally credited in the documentary.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand if a liberal is working on the movie and they don\u2019t want to be credited, but they want to feed their family,\u201d Ratner told Variety<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t blame anybody for that.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a scary time for documentarians. Will they have to start working with the likes of Brett Ratner to make infomercials that please Donald Trump<\/a> to pay the bills? The success of \u201cMelania\u201d suggests they might.<\/p>\n Other streamers like Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook attended the White House premiere of \u201cMelania,\u201d could potentially turn their back on the documentary community and attempt to make current event, politically minded documentaries disappear. HBO and Netflix are holdouts. Both companies still support social issue films that tackle politics.<\/p>\n \u2018The Alabama Solution\u2019\u00a9HBO Max\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Alabama Solution,\u201d<\/a> a hard-hitting expos\u00e9 of the brutal Alabama state prison system, and Netflix\u2019s \u201cThe Perfect Neighbor,\u201d a film that takes aim at America\u2019s stand-your-ground laws, both received Oscar nominations in the best feature documentary category this year.\u201d Later this year, fingers crossed, HBO will release Alex Gibney\u2019s Elon Musk documentary \u201cMusk.\u201d<\/p>\n Without timely documentaries that confront power and interrogate the truth, there\u2019s a vacuum to be filled with propaganda.<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It should come as no surprise that Amazon\u2019s documentary \u201cMelania,\u201d about First Lady Melania Trump, grossed $7 million at the box office over the weekend, making it the highest opening for a non-music documentary in over a decade. That\u2019s not because \u201cMelania\u201d is an exquisitely made, informative documentary. It\u2019s not even a documentary. More from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2263752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[23763,345395,31122,24638],"class_list":["post-2263751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-amazon","tag-documentaries","tag-melania-trump","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Every-Documentary-Filmmaker-Should-Be-Worried-About-the-Success-of.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2263751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2263753,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263751\/revisions\/2263753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2263752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2263751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2263751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2263751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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