By Gloria Ogbonna
The feature-length documentary Melania, centered on First Lady Melania Trump, delivered a major surprise at the box office on Monday, pulling in an additional $1 million in ticket sales, according to studio sources.
The strong weekday performance comes on the heels of a historic opening weekend that has exceeded industry expectations and prompted Amazon MGM Studios to dramatically expand the film’s theatrical release across the United States.
Buoyed by what studio insiders describe as a powerful wave of grassroots support, Amazon MGM has announced plans to add the Brett Ratner–directed documentary to more than 200 additional theaters.
The expansion will bring Melania into dozens of new cities and markets where demand has continued to grow since the film’s debut.
“All of First Lady Melania Trump’s hard work is paying off,” Marc Beckman, Melania’s longtime senior advisor and a producer on the film, told Breitbart News. Beckman credited the film’s success to Melania Trump’s direct involvement and leadership throughout the project.
“We now have one of the highest openings for a documentary film in 14 years, and we’re quickly expanding into more theater houses across the country,” Beckman said. “It’s all a testament to Melania Trump and her leadership in creating a quality product for the American people.”
The documentary’s opening weekend numbers were especially striking. From Friday through Sunday, Melania earned approximately $2.86 million on Friday, $2.30 million on Saturday, and just under $2 million on Sunday, totaling more than $7 million in its first three days. That performance marks the strongest opening weekend for a documentary in the past decade.
As Breitbart columnist John Nolte pointed out, the film has already outperformed the entire domestic box office runs of five films released in 2025 that were later nominated for Academy Awards, including two Best Picture nominees.
With Monday’s additional $1 million haul, Melania has firmly established itself as a rare theatrical success in a genre that typically struggles to draw large audiences to cinemas.
Given the momentum, Amazon MGM executives are moving quickly to capitalize on the demand. “They’re really psyched,” Beckman said, noting that the studio is expanding the release to nearly 200 more theaters, bringing the total number of domestic screens to almost 2,000 nationwide.
The film is being added to multiplexes in markets where it significantly overperformed during its debut. These include cities such as Dallas, Texas; Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach, Florida; and Phoenix, Arizona.
Notably, the expansion is not limited to traditionally conservative regions. The documentary is also rolling out in major metropolitan and traditionally liberal markets, including Washington, D.C.; New York City; Boston; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Atlanta; Minneapolis–St. Paul; Chicago; Denver; and Detroit.
Additional cities joining the theatrical run include Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Salt Lake City, Utah; Savannah, Georgia; and many others, underscoring the film’s broad geographic appeal.
“This is just old-fashioned, quality storytelling from the First Lady of the United States,” Beckman said, echoing comments made by director Brett Ratner during the opening weekend.
Ratner, who attended the film’s world premiere alongside Beckman at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., emphasized that the project was driven by Melania Trump’s vision from the very beginning.
“I have to give all the credit to Melania because this was something that she came up with—even before she met me,” Ratner told Breitbart News. “From day one, she said, ‘I want this to be very cinematic. I want it to have a theatrical release. I want it to live and play in theaters.’”
Ratner noted that such ambition is unusual for documentaries, which are more commonly released directly to streaming platforms.
“It’s very rare that documentaries get released in theaters,” he said. “Even before streaming, documentaries almost never played in cinemas. This was really her vision to make it theatrical and to see it through.”
Despite ongoing criticism from much of the entertainment press and Hollywood establishment, the audience response has told a dramatically different story.
While Melania currently holds a six percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, its audience score stands at a striking 99 percent, highlighting a sharp divide between professional critics and moviegoers.
As Melania continues to expand into new markets and defy expectations, its box office performance is being viewed by supporters as both a cultural and commercial statement one driven by audience enthusiasm, grassroots momentum, and a clear creative vision from the former First Lady herself.
Source Breitbart
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