Rotten Tomatoes Owner Says ‘Melania’ 99% Audience Score Is Not ‘Bot Manipulation’: ‘Reviews Are Verified… Users Bought a Ticket to the Film’

Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company Versant is denying any tampering is going on with the “Melania” audience scores on the review aggregator website. The Amazon MGM-backed documentary has a 99% audience score compared to a disastrous 7% critics score as of the Friday morning heading into “Melania’s” second weekend of release. The huge divide between the scores has led many to wonder if MAGA-supported bots are being used to drive up the audience score.

“There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the ‘Melania’ documentary,” Versant said in a statement to Variety. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”

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Jimmy Kimmel questioned the documentary’s audience scores during his Feb. 4 monologue when he said: “As of tonight, Melania has a score of 5% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics. That is very low. To put that in perspective, that is 1% lower than ‘Gigli.’ The audience score for ‘Melania’ is 99% positive, which is 1% higher than ‘The Godfather.’ And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with that at all.”

Kimmel added, “We need to get to the bottom of this. Send in Tulsi Gabbard and the FBI! Seize the ticket machines, the popcorn buckets, the box office receipts, at every multiplex in America!”

Per Rolling Stone: “Melania Trump’s new documentary is now the film with the biggest disparity between critic and audience reviews in Rotten Tomatoes history.”

“Melania,” directed by Brett Ratner, follows Melania Trump in the 20 days leading up to her husband Donald’s second presidential inauguration. The film opened to $7 million domestically, a strong start for a documentary feature but not the best start for a movie that Amazon bought for $40 million and then spent $35 million to market.

As Variety reported, the audience for “Melania” during its opening weekend was 72% female and 83% over the age of 45. Nearly 75% of ticket buyers were white, according to PostTrak data. 

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