Amazon paid $40 million to license the rights to make Melania, a documentary following Melania Trump in the 20 days before her return to the White House, then spent another $35 million marketing it, according to the New York Times. The film earned just $16.6 million at the global box office. Now, with Democrats poised to take control of the House and Senate, questions about whether that spending amounted to a corrupt pay-to-play arrangement are headed toward Congress.
A Deal Lawmakers Call 'Bribery in Plain Sight'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Hank Johnson have launched an investigation into whether Amazon's investment in the Melania documentary was part of a corrupt pay-to-play arrangement with the Trump administration, according to a press release from Sen. Warren's office. The allegation remains under investigation and has not been established as a finding of wrongdoing. Amazon MGM's offer for the film was $26 million above the next-highest bid, from Disney, according to Variety.
Amazon has pushed back on the characterization. The company said it disagreed with any suggestion that its decision to license the film and accompanying series was improper, per the same Variety report, and has separately said it licensed the projects because it believed customers would enjoy them. Brett Ratner, who directed Melania, defended the price tag by noting the deal covered not just a feature film but three docuseries episodes, calling the backlash “silly” in comments to Forbes. He denied the budget had anything to do with corruption.
Sequel Series Lands Nov. 20, Built on Unseen Footage
Amazon announced a two-part docuseries, Melania, The Series, focused on the first lady's return to Washington in early 2025, and the show is scheduled to begin airing Nov. 20 on Prime Video, according to the Washington Post. The series includes previously unseen footage of Melania Trump preparing to become first lady and following her husband's inauguration, filmed by Ratner. Critics panned the original film as pro-Trump propaganda and a shallow, sycophantic portrait, and according to The Mercury News, Amazon employees in the entertainment division were told that company leadership had mandated the documentary's release.
Mike Hopkins, senior vice president and head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, presumably greenlit both the documentary and the upcoming series, as characterized by The Mercury News. Puck newsletter writer Matthew Belloni has wondered whether Hopkins would testify under oath about Amazon's $40 million rights payment, which Belloni has characterized as a bribe disguised as a rights deal. An Amazon spokesperson declined to respond directly to a New York Times query about the series' release and instead referred the paper to a company statement issued alongside the documentary in January.
Box Office Beat Expectations, But Critics Weren't Buying It
The film actually outperformed projections at the domestic box office, pulling in more than $7 million in its U.S. opening weekend versus the roughly $5 million it had been expected to generate, according to the BBC. Some outlets described it as the best opening weekend for a documentary in a decade, though that comparison is complicated by the lack of a universal definition of the genre, according to MS NOW. Critics were far less kind: just 10 percent of the film's reviews from professional critics were positive on Rotten Tomatoes, the outlet reported.
The spending still stands out against industry norms. Films with a similar single-subject scope are typically budgeted around $5 million, the New York Times reported, per MS NOW, while documentary filmmaker Josh Davidsburg said independent documentarians typically work with budgets between $100,000 and $600,000. Former Amazon film executive Ted Hope called Melania the most expensive documentary he knew of that didn't involve music licensing, according to Forbes.
Backlash Fits a Broader Pattern of Corporate Deference
Variety writer Daniel D'Addario wrote that it seemed shameless for Melania Trump to accept the payment without providing anything to earn the fee, and that Trump has lost control of the national conversation. Corporate America broadly flocked to Donald Trump following his 2024 popular-vote election win, with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez attending his inauguration as guests of honor in January 2025. Variety Australia has separately reported that Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit tied to 60 Minutes, while Disney wrote a $15 million check to Trump's presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit involving ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, according to Variety Australia.
Belloni wrote that the Nov. 3 midterm results reflected a seismic backlash against Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other big tech leaders who had leveraged Trump. Republicans lost seats in both the Senate and House in those elections, and JD Vance has cited the unpopular war with Iran as one factor behind the losses. The Melania documentary was released the month before Trump launched that war, and with Democrats about to take control of both chambers, plans are brewing for broader investigations into potential corruption tied to corporate dealings with the administration.
