The long-touted Melania Trump documentary hits theaters this week.
And the drama surrounding the film’s release might be more compelling than anything that happens on screen.
As we previously reported, Melania is receiving horrendous reviews, and ticket presales are some of the lowest ever seen for a film that’s screening in this many theaters.
And just when it looked like the situation couldn’t get any worse, crew members began publicly bad-mouthing the film and asking to have their names removed from the credits.
It’s a highly unusual move, as a credit on a high-profile project like this one is the sort of thing that careers are built on.
But despite the hard work they put in — and it sounds like this was not an easy film to work on — crew members are either so unhappy with the finished product or so wary of the tainted Trump brand that they would prefer not to be associated with it.
“People were worked really hard. Really long hours, highly disorganized, very chaotic,” one person who worked on the set told Rolling Stone.
“It wasn’t easy money,” another added.
“It was very difficult because of the chaos that was around everything.… Usually [for a documentary] it’s like, ‘Oh, follow the subject.’ Well, it’s Melania Trump. With the first lady and Secret Service, you can’t just do things you usually do,” the second source explained, adding:
“I’m much more alarmed now than I was a year ago.”
Others said their beef had less to do with the subject of the film than with its director, Brett Ratner.
Before being tapped for Melania, Ratner had not helmed a film since 2017, when several women publicly accused him of sexual harassment.
“I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the propaganda element of this. But Brett Ratner was the worst part of working on this project,” said one insider.
“There was more talk about Brett being slimy than there was about Melania.”
“She was totally nice,” another added. “She was the opposite of Brett Ratner.”
Since seemingly no one wants to see this movie, and no one even wanted to work on it, there are questions about why it was made in the first place.
The answer might lie in the film’s financing. Amazon Studios shelled out a reported $75 million to produce Melania, and $28 million of that was a “licensing fee” that went straight to the Trumps.
In other words, this might all be an elaborate way for Jeff Bezos to grease the president’s palm.
Bezos almost certainly won’t be making his money back at the box office, but he may recoup his losses in the form of favors from the White House.