Tech
Oregon theater marquee joked about ‘Melania’ movie, and manager says Amazon pulled the film
The new “Melania” documentary film was released by Amazon MGM Studios to 1,778 theaters across the country. Make that 1,777 now.
The manager of the Lake Theater & Cafe in Lake Oswego, Ore., just outside of Portland, said a marquee he put up for the theater’s screening of the film about First Lady Melania Trump managed to upset Amazon enough that the company pulled the film.
“To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday,” read the marquee, as seen in a photograph accompanying a story in The Oregonian.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Lake Theater & Cafe said “the higher ups” at Amazon were upset with the marketing move and that Sunday was the last showing of “Melania” at the theater. A new marquee said Amazon got “mad” and all “Melania” shows were canceled, and that patrons could show their support instead at a nearby Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market.
GeekWire reached out to Amazon for comment, and we’ll update if we hear back.
Marquee messages are apparently a running joke at the Lake Theater. On the theater’s website about page, there are numerous voicemails from passersby reacting to previous messages. The page also has a photo of a marquee that read, “Not getting the Taylor Swift movie because her music’s not even good.”
In a blog post, manager Jordan Perry expounded on why the theater even booked a two-week run of “Melania,” the reaction from both sides of the political spectrum, and how much money the screening made for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
“To fill a screen, why not get this inexplicable vanity piece from the current president’s wife?” Perry wrote. “I mean, it just seems so weird that it even exists (who wants a movie about Melania lol?), and wouldn’t it then be exponentially weirder, to the point of being funny, to show it here, at your obviously anti-establishment, occasionally troublemaking, neighborhood cinema?”
Perry said he had no interest in trying to get people to vote one way or another. He said he was more interested in helping people be more “open-minded, compassionate, and well-informed.” He added that for each $11 ticket sold, $5.50 went to Amazon MGM Studios.
“We contributed, in all, $196 to the Jeff Bezos Trust Fund this week (far more to the ‘Hamnet’ Trust Fund, thank you, ‘Hamnet’ lovers),” Perry said.
“Melania” pulled in much more than that in a total weekend box office of $7 million — the largest opening haul for a non-concert documentary in 14 years, according to The New York Times. The film finished third for the weekend behind horror thriller “Send Help” ($20 million) and horror sci-fi mashup “Iron Lung” ($18 million).
Amazon spent $75 million to acquire the rights and market the film, which was directed by Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour,” “X-Men: The Last Stand”) and provides an inside look at the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration.
Backlash around the film was not limited to a small theater in Oregon. Critics torched the film as propaganda in early reviews. Bus stop ads and billboards in Los Angeles have been defaced. And Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Apple CEO Tim Cook were among those who took heat for attending a private White House screening of the film on the same day protester Alex Pretti was killed in Minneapolis by federal agents.
Watch the “Melania” trailer below: