Michelle Obama documentary rises 13,000% in views as Melania film opens | Documentary films

Michelle Obama’s 2020 documentary Becoming saw a major rise in views over the same weekend that Melania was released in cinemas.

The film, which followed the former first lady in the wake of her hit book, saw a rise in views of more than 13,000% over the past weekend, with 47.5m minutes viewed, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The weekend before saw only 354,000 minutes watched, according to Luminate.

Melania, which was made for $40m by Amazon and had a $35m ad spend, made $7m in its first weekend at the US box office, the best opening for a documentary in more than a decade.

The film, which the Guardian’s Xan Brooks described as “a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest” in a zero-star review, has been struggling overseas, opening at number 29 in the UK and number 31 in Australia.

Melania currently has a 5% rating on Rotten Tomatoes compared with Becoming, which has 93%.

The audience for Melania was overwhelmingly white women over the age of 55.

The film’s director, Brett Ratner, who was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in 2017, defended himself this week after he was seen in a photograph with Jeffrey Epstein in the latest release of documents.

“I didn’t have a personal relationship with him,” he said. “I didn’t know him … You get thrown into these things. It’s crazy. It’s horrible.”

On Wednesday, Melania met with freed Israeli-American hostages at the White House and plugged her documentary. She spoke about a meeting with Aviva Siegel in January 2025 as she tried to free her husband, Keith.

“It was captured on camera and available to see in my new film Melania,” she said to press. “It was very emotional.”

She later claimed it was “not a promotion”.

This week saw the owner of an Oregon cinema reveal that Amazon had pulled Melania from his cinema after he made jokes about the film on the marquee. The Lake Theater and Cafe in Lake Oswego had promoted the film with: “To defeat your enemy you must know them. Melania starts Friday.”