A weekly film and box office newsletter. Howdy, folks! The big story at the box office this weekend isn't the film that hit No. 1 — that would be 20th Century Studios' thriller "Send Help" — but the No. 3 film, "Melania." The documentary, for which Amazon MGM paid $40 million and spent another $35 million on a worldwide marketing campaign, grossed $7 million this weekend, making it the biggest opening for a non-music doc in a decade. That's despite being absolutely shellacked by critics. The Melania Trump documentary, which was produced by Melania Trump, has a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes — our critic called it a "tasteless, tedious, criminally shallow propaganda puff piece." But is the $7 million opening really that staggering? It beat industry projections, but as my esteemed colleague Jeremy Fuster pointed out, the audience for "Melania" was 72% women over the age of 55 — a demo that doesn't usually show up in pre-release tracking. And if you look at the turnout for, say, some Christian-focused Angel Studios releases of the past few years, they look pretty similar. Christian apocalypse drama "Homestead" opened to $6 million in 2024, faith-centric rodeo drama "The Last Rodeo" opened to $5.4 million in 2025 and even Angel's near-death experiences documentary "After Death" opened to $5 million in 2023. Considering the base's turnout when a film is released that seems to be tailor-made for their demo, "Melania" performed just slightly above par — even with the added starpower of the Trumps. And the film sure did play to its base, overperforming in red states compared to traditional theatrical turnout. Dallas was the top-performing city, a rarity. More to the point, the box office performance of "Melania" is way off from what Amazon MGM invested into the film (which some have flatly called a "bribe" to curry favor with the Trumps). The movie is likely to top out around $30 million, if that, which leaves a hefty deficit in the shadow of its $75 million price tag. We'll see how the film performs next weekend. Although, in an unfortunate turn of timing, director Brett Ratner showed up in newly released photos from the Epstein files this weekend. Not a great look! Adam Chitwood 
Box Office: ‘Send Help’ Duels ‘Iron Lung’ With $20M Opening, ‘Melania’ Beats Projections With $7M StartAfter last weekend’s abysmal numbers, business is looking better at the box office to finish January thanks to stronger-than-expected opening weekends for 20th Century’s “Send Help,” Markiplier’s “Iron Lung,” and yes, even... 
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