Washington Examiner senior writer Joe Concha said Monday that audience reception is what “really matters” when looking at the box office performance of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary.
Despite being negatively received by most film critics, Melania, a film giving a behind-the-scenes look at the first lady’s 20 days before Inauguration Day 2025, opened to $7 million over the weekend, the biggest opening for a non-music documentary in over a decade.
Concha, who saw the film Sunday and thought it was “excellent,” said the film’s 99% audience score and 10% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes are similar to the Reagan biopic released in 2024. Reagan starred Dennis Quaid as the 40th president, and got a similar 98% audience score against an 18% critics score.
“This shows you the disconnect between liberals, in terms of those who are movie critics, and what really matters is the people that go to see the movie, and they all loved it. It certainly got cheers when I was done watching the movie, and this is where we are now at this point,” Concha said on Fox Business’s Varney & Co. Monday.
“So in the end, Stuart, I’ll leave it here: Melania the movie will be the highest-grossing documentary in terms of an opening weekend we have seen in more than 10 years, and that’s really saying something in terms of what people want to see, at least half the country anyway,” Concha said.
Both President Donald Trump and his wife have celebrated the film’s “BLOCKBUSTER” success on social media. Melania also spotlighted the film’s “A” rating from CinemaScore.
Concha predicted last week that “a lot of people” would be interested in learning about the first lady through this documentary, given how “she’s been as private as any first lady in the modern TV era.”
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Melania’s box office opening went above initial industry predictions of $5 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The film’s audience consisted mostly of women and older viewers, with 72% of the film’s audience on Friday being women over 55, and 78% of all viewers older than 55, also per the Hollywood Reporter.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), written and directed by Michael Moore, holds the record for the biggest opening weekend for a political documentary. The film opened to $23.9 million.
