Adult at 9:40am in Sittingbourne: Front row seat to Melania’s ill-fated UK opening | film

TThursday night in Washington saw the world premiere of Melania, Brett Ratner’s $40 million film about the First Lady, easily the most expensive documentary ever made. At the recently renamed Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, guests, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, waved to reporters from the black carpet (which was an homage to the first lady’s favorite color) before ascending the steps emblazoned with her name in large, glowing monochrome letters. Once the film, which revealed Melania Trump’s character over the 20 days leading up to her husband’s inauguration in January 2025, began, the press was banned.

Everyone was welcome to attend the UK premiere on Friday morning, however all other tickets for the 9.40am showing in the 34-seat third screen at Sittingbourne’s Light Cinema remained unsold. Ten minutes before it started, the doors to the complex were still locked and there were only seagulls roaming the ponds outside the entrance. One guide emphasized that screenings this early were unusual, “usually just children’s films.”

Twelve showings are scheduled over the course of the film’s week, with six seats sold so far. By contrast, 59 seats have already been booked for the first-day showing of Wuthering Heights two weeks later, and 33 seats for Being Victoria Wood next Tuesday.

This image is being replicated in about 100 cinemas in the UK where Melania is shown, as well as in most of the 1,500 cinemas in the US showing the film, and about 3,000 other cinemas around the world.

Speaking on Thursday night, Melania said it was Amazon’s commitment to a wide theatrical release for the film that convinced her to choose them over the likes of Disney and Paramount, who are also bidding for the rights. “Amazon was the best because they agreed to show it to theaters all over the world,” she said.

Ratner, who has not made a film since 2014’s Hercules after multiple sexual misconduct allegations were made against him in 2017 (which he denies and have not been charged), was also keen to support the streamer’s commitment to cinemas. “For me, this is already a success,” he said, “just the fact that Amazon agreed to distribute this film in theaters. It’s a different world today. When I was a kid, all I cared about was the box office. ‘How much money is this movie going to make?’ And now it’s like I’ve actually succeeded. I’ve grown up a little bit.”

The film is expected to make between $3 million and $5 million in the United States during its opening weekend, but ticket sales in the other 25 territories where it will be released this weekend are much lower. The exception is Slovenia, Melania’s home country, where almost all seats were sold for Friday evening’s show in the capital, Ljubljana.

Films generally require approximately two and a half times their production budget in global theatrical revenues to break even. This means Melania needs to make $100 million to recoup the costs. For comparison, this number was recently achieved by Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet’s nine-Oscar nomination, which became A24’s highest-grossing film of all time. Other successful films currently in cinemas – such as “Hamnet” and “28 Years Later: Temple of Bones” – are worth about $42 million.

“Everything about Melania’s reported numbers is surreal and certainly unprecedented,” says Stephen Gaydos, a veteran entertainment journalist and former vice president and executive editor of Variety. “A documentary based on a subject of little popular interest, spends such astonishing sums of money and goes to theaters where it instantly evaporates like spit on a griddle. Its cost is disproportionate to the audience for this project.”

The film’s wide release (UK documentaries are released in about 25 locations), combined with alarmingly early or late start times, has raised suspicions in the industry that distributor Amazon may be paying cinemas to play the film. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

This is an uncommon practice known as four walls, whereby the distributor rents the “four walls” of the screen from the owner for a fixed fee and keeps all the box office coffers, while the cinema keeps all the popcorn profits. Four Walls is usually reserved for titles deemed too niche for distributors to risk acquiring, such as documentaries based on home video, conspiracy theory films, and pornography. In 1972, Deep Throat became the only film to successfully capitalize on this tactic, when it was shown exclusively – and profitably – in privately rented cinemas.

If this had been the case at Sittingbourne, Amazon would have paid around £4,080 over the week and would have refunded just over £100 (all tickets are £3 on Saturday). Representatives for The Light — a 14-building chain with a focus on community programming and inclusive events — as well as Odeon and Vue did not respond to requests for comment. “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers will love it,” Amazon previously said.

On Thursday, an unverified ad on Craiglist offered free tickets to the film this weekend in Boston, plus a $50 stipend for those who agree to stay until the final credits. If this were a real offer from Amazon, and the four-wall strategy was verified, this would mean that the company would donate to Melania four times: first for the rights to the film, then to ensure it is shown in cinemas, then to get people to see it – and for the tickets themselves.

“These empty theaters and disastrous box office numbers will be a huge embarrassment to expect,” Gaydos said. “I guess no one cares, because there’s no way anyone would be surprised.”

While the percentage of box office revenues outside the US is widely expected to be low, the scale of the rollout also means that the average screen revenue percentage is likely to be significantly lower.

Earlier this week, the president wrote on Truth Social that the film was a “must see” and that tickets were “selling fast.” Speaking on the black carpet, the first lady — who reportedly paid herself $28 million for her participation and oversaw much of the film’s promotional campaign herself — explained the film’s global appeal. “Everyone will connect on some level,” she said. “Teenage girls can go to see it, young women can go to see it, and be inspired that they can have a family and a career, too.”

On Thursday, the film’s release in South Africa was abruptly cancelled, with a spokesperson for the local distributor citing “recent developments” and the “current climate.” Trump is considered a very unpopular figure in the country at the present time after his comments about the “white genocide” being waged against the Afrikaner population.

In the United States, where most of the film’s $35 million promotional budget was spent, posters and billboards were defaced. Meanwhile, Ratner’s Instagram posts about the film were filled with comments comparing him to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and passing comments on his appearance in a photo in Epstein’s files. One reads: “It is difficult to say who is the most weak, insolent, petty, obtuse, worthless, unrepentant and filthy.” [cuss word]Melania or you?

Speaking at the Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday evening, the director addressed reports that crew members, including at least half of those who worked on the New York sections of the film, requested that their names be removed from the credits.

“I understand if liberals are working on the movie and don’t want to take credit but want to feed their families,” he said. “I don’t blame anyone for that.”

The Rolling Stone report cites anonymous sources condemning Ratner’s behavior during filming, including performative eating while crew members were not provided with food for long days, as well as leaving the crew stuck late at night in a faulty state.

“There was a lot more talk about Brett being clingy than there was about Melania,” one said, while another agreed that the First Lady “was quite nice. She was the complete opposite of Brett Ratner.”

Ratner, who splits his time between Israel and a villa at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, is now working on completing a miniseries about the first lady, before turning his attention to the fourth installment of the moribund action franchise Rush Hour, which got the green light from Paramount last year after the president expressed interest in reviving the series.