The ‘Melania‘ incident shows once again just how divorced from reality Twitter can be . A bunch of tweets showing empty theaters suddenly went viral – and that was enough for a lot of people to assume the documentary would tank. But things didn’t quite play out that way. In fact, the film surprised everyone by raking in $7.04 million at the box office by the end of the weekend – making it the best documentary opening of this decade.
The project, helmed by Brett Ratner – who’s been back in the headlines pretty recently owing to all that stuff with Jeffrey Epstein – squeezed into the top three at the US box office for the weekend of January 30 to February 1. And what’s interesting is that the film’s success is largely down to women over 45, who accounted for more than 70% of the audience.
As for whether ‘Melania’ will actually turn a profit for Amazon MGM… well that’s still anyone’s guess. They paid $40 million for the rights and then dropped another $35 million on marketing and distribution – which is a pretty tall order to clear. Anyway, it’s off to Prime Video in one week’s time after one final weekend in theaters.
A Tight Squeeze for the Top Spot Before ‘Melania’ hit theaters, there was a real tightrope act going on up at number one – with ‘Send Help‘ ultimately edging out the competition to take the spot. And it’s no surprise: Sam Raimi’s latest flick has got his loyal fanbase and all the horror enthusiasts eating out of the palm of his hand, raking in a not too shabby $20 million in its opening weekend. Starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, this one cost $40 million to make and seems on track to at least break even.
‘Send Help’ nudged ‘Iron Lung’, a post-apocalyptic film based on that popular video game of the same name, out of top spot. And this one is a real success story: directed and even self-distributed by Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) on a super modest $3 million budget, it still somehow managed to gross an astonishing $18 million in its debut.
Chugging along on 4th is the unstoppable ‘Zootopia 2‘. Although it’s in its tenth week now, it still managed to eke out an extra 9% over the previous weekend, adding $5.8 million to the total. What’s even more impressive is it has now cleared that $400 million domestic mark, knocking ‘Frozen’ out of the way in the process.
Rounding out the top 5 is the new release ‘Shelter‘. But to be blunt, I’m not optimistic about its future prospects; despite starring Jason Statham, it only managed $5.5 million against a pretty eye-watering $50 million budget. It’s pretty clear the studio’s already looking to streaming as a way to limit their losses.
