Amazon Reportedly Pays $40 Million for Documentary on Melania Trump

In different conspicuously fortuitous improvement for the incoming president, Amazon has opted to make a documentary connected his wife, Melania Trump. The doc, which Puck has referred to arsenic a “vanity” project, volition supply an “unprecedented down the scenes look” astatine the First Lady, according to Amazon. To marque matters weirder, the movie is acceptable to beryllium helmed by Brett Ratner, the erstwhile enactment movie manager whose vocation was mostly undone by sexual misconduct allegations that cropped up during the #MeToo movement.

News of the documentary was archetypal broken by Semafor, which noted that the accumulation has already begun shooting and is expected to bask a little theatrical tally earlier coming to Amazon’s streaming service, Prime. Puck has since reported connected the financials of the deal, revealing Amazon has paid $40 cardinal to licence Ratner’s film, according to aggregate sources. Melania volition besides service arsenic an enforcement shaper connected the task and, arsenic Puck’s Matthew Belloni writes, “It’s unclear however overmuch the archetypal woman is personally being paid to enactment and ‘produce’ this task portion her hubby is successful office, but I’m betting it’s a large chunk of that $40 million.” Amazon besides plans to make a multi-episode docuseries connected Melania that volition travel the documentary, Belloni writes.

It could beryllium that Amazon conscionable truthful happens to person chosen this peculiar infinitesimal to radiance a airy connected the admittedly sphinx-like fig that is Melania Trump… or, it could beryllium that Amazon—like galore different tech companies—is presently doing its champion to suck up to her hubby arsenic helium ascends to the White House for his 2nd term. Notably, Amazon is besides 1 of respective large tech companies that has precocious donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration festivities. Meta, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Apple’s Tim Cook person each made akin donations.

By astir accounts, Amazon’s caller movie is expected to beryllium small much than a hagiography of the First Lady, with Semafor referring to it arsenic a “warm embrace” and Puck calling it “quite a payday for Mrs. Trump.” It’s also, ostensibly, an accidental for her to archer her story. Despite a recent publication deal and her hubby being 1 of the astir recognizable radical connected the planet, Melania has mostly eschewed the spotlight. At the aforesaid time, she has besides zealously guarded her nationalist image. In 2017, Trump accepted 2 abstracted payouts—one from the Daily Mail, and the different from a Maryland blogger, Webster Tarpley—in libel cases that progressive the work of rumors that she had antecedently worked for an escort work earlier becoming a model. Both defendants subsequently retracted their stories and apologized.

How Ratner got progressive is inactive somewhat unclear, though Belloni notes that the manager is known to support “ties to Trumpworld figures,” astir notably Steven Mnuchin, who served arsenic the treasury caput during Trump’s archetypal word and antecedently worked with Ratner astatine his RatPac-Dune Entertainment. The manager hasn’t made a movie since 2017, the twelvemonth helium was accused by aggregate high-profile actresses of sexual harassment and, successful 1 case, sexual assault. Ratner has denied the allegations. He has been living successful Israel since 2023.