“Melania,” a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, is exceeded box office expectationswith Sunday estimates suggesting it will earn $7.04 million in its opening weekend.

The documentary comes in third overall for the weekend, behind the Sam Raimi-directed thriller “Send Help” ($20 million) and “Iron Lung” ($17.8 million), a video game adaptation from YouTuber Mark Fischbach (better known as Markiplier).

Amazon paid $40 million to acquire “Melania” and reportedly spent $35 million promoting it. So even though the documentary surpassed pre-release estimates that predicted a $3 to $5 million opening weekend, it never made a profit in theaters.

Amazon’s bid came in $26 million ahead of the next highest bidder, Disney, leading critics to suggest the deal had less to do with the film’s box office potential and more to win over the Trump administration. Veteran film executive Ted Hope, who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020, told The New York Times that the film “has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that doesn’t involve music licensing.”

“How is this not comparable to asking for a favor or an outright bribe?” Hope said. “How could that not happen?”

This is the first film directed by Brett Ratner since 2017, when many women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct. (Ratner denies those accusations.) Rolling Stone reported that two-thirds of the film’s New York crew asked not to be formally credited in the movie.

While Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the preview screening of “Melania” at the White House last week “Melania” was not screened in advance for critics, and the subsequent reviews were brutal. The documentary today sits at 7% on review aggregator Metacriticwhich indicates “extremely disliked,” and at 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.

New York Times film critic It was described by Manohla Dargis as “a limited and carefully staged account of Mrs. Trump’s daily life” in the 20 days leading up to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration.

In a statement, Amazon MGM’s head of domestic theatrical distribution Kevin Wilson described this weekend as “an important first step in what we see as a long-tail lifecycle for film and future docu-series,” which he predicts will have a “significant life” on Amazon’s Prime streaming service.