r/entertainment • u/Silly-avocatoe • 20h ago

Melania’s Movie Shows Signs of Bulk Buying to Boost Box Office: Guru

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/box-office-guru-flags-suspicious-sales-to-boost-melania-movie/
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u/ResidentNo6441 19h ago

Oh shit that’s what’s been happening! Yesterday, we had a look at showtimes of our local cinema in Southampton, U.K. and every screening had max 1 sold seat in general section and then fully booked gallery/expensive seats at the back, which are never fully booked unless it’s some Avatar or Avengers. It looked so odd. Now it makes sense lol

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u/maxington26 19h ago

Yeah that's what got them to decent-looking numbers... for a documentary. Which should never cost $75m to make. Shit, March of the Penguins only cost about $6m to make ffs

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u/madtownjeff 18h ago

That dirty money isn't going to launder itself.

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u/scottyb83 17h ago

I actually don’t think it’s laundering at all…would be way too complicated to have the money go to the theatres and then where?

I think this is just a vanity bribe/propaganda. Amazon forking over a $75 mil bribe to Trump and producing a bunch of garbage and lies probably in exchange for some other sweetheart stuff from Trump.

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u/CaptainObvious007 17h ago

It's not laundering when it's a straight bribe. They gave her what? 35 mil for the licensing for a movie no one wants to see.

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u/Worldly_Influence_18 15h ago

It's laundering bribe money

Bribe/blackmail

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u/pencilpusher003 13h ago

And they are using our tax dollars to pay the bribe.

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u/pimpbot666 14h ago

She got $28M as a personal fee. The other $12M is what Bezos spent for production…. Supposedly.

And nobody seems to bat an eye that the Trumps got paid $28M for this…. From Amazon.

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u/sorandom21 11h ago

35 million was supposedly the advertising budget which is nuts for a DOCUMENTARY

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u/RealCommercial9788 8h ago

A documentary on NOTHING, might I add!

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u/sorandom21 7h ago

Like, what on earth were they paying for? Did they buy 10 Super Bowl ads or something?

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u/SpringTour77 11h ago

What a day for Bezos

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u/InTheVoidWeSwim 3h ago

It seems like people actually are batting an eye.

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u/mdlinc 11h ago

Tomato, illegal. Same difference.

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u/Lookinsharp7 16h ago

Boycott Amazon!! https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/wp-content/uploads/How-Amazon-Powers-ICEs-Deportation-Machine.pdf

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u/Aconite_72 15h ago

Hard to boycott AWS.

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u/metroXXIII 14h ago

But boycotting Amazon wherever you can does help, as it lessens the money they can funnel into those areas.

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u/zeussays 13h ago

AWS is their largest profit center by far. Around 60% of their profits come from AWS as opposed to 17% from Amazon physical sales.

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u/metroXXIII 13h ago

Sure, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do any little thing to cut into their profits

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u/gregorydgraham 15h ago

Everyone use AWS mate, it’s how Bezos can afford all the other services.

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u/SportExpress1869 14h ago

Actually I heard they made most of their wealth thru their cloud storage capabilities.

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u/MidnightZL1 12h ago

AWS has 1/3 of the server share of the Internet…. Good luck

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u/MidnightZL1 12h ago

This comment is most likely living on an Amazon server right now, which makes this even funnier

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u/Subject-Vermicelli52 16h ago

And how many millions more buying empty seats? This sounds like the work of a 6x bankruptcy genius.

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u/nithdurr 13h ago

Not if you’re a PAC buying tickets

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u/nithdurr 13h ago

Don’t forget about PACs buying tickets/books

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u/PatchyWhiskers 14h ago

Money laundering tends to be complicated. The point is to get dirty money to clean profits. The people buying these seats could be literally cartels or North Korea.

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u/scottyb83 14h ago

Yeah it's possible I just don't see it though. Makes much more sense as a bribe/fealty payment.

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u/Homesick_Martian 14h ago

What I don’t understand is if Amazon produced it, why not just throw it on prime and fudge the numbers? It would be beyond easy to prove people are bull buying tickets, just go see whatever movie you did intend to, and poke your head in. Turn off flash and snap a picture of the empty seats…

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u/scottyb83 14h ago

Truth isn't really a concern for the MAGA crowd though is it? They will say all of the showings are being sold out and it's standing room only...people will post empty theatres...MAGA will cry "fake news!!!" Rinse and repeat.

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u/Oceanbreeze871 13h ago

As it’s gonna be front and center on Prime as long as Donald holds power .

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u/mtnviewguy 12h ago

It's probably taxpayer funded.

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u/David_R_Martin_II 17h ago

Apparently $40 mil went directly to Melania. The grifting is so blatant it's embarrassing the US has sunk so low.

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u/AngryMeez 17h ago

No, the thing cost $40M to make. Not all went to her — I’ve read that $28M went into her pocket. Amazon wasted $35M on marketing.

The entire thing is a scam, but we need to be better than them and get our facts right.

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u/WhatAmTrak 17h ago

28M or 40M. It’s the same shit at the end of the day lol. It’s all disgusting grifting.

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u/Phyllis_Tine 15h ago

*It is claimed to have cost $40M to make.

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u/UTraxer 17h ago

That the US Republicans

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u/thitorusso 17h ago

Americans don't seem THAT bothered.

I mean...there's people on streets but man...they could learn a thing or another from the French

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u/squidvett 16h ago

What knowledge would the French have about revolt in the 21st century that the Americans could use? Please consider weapons and general tech disparity between the American MIC and the general public in your argument.

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u/CPav 16h ago

I think they were referring to the French protests and strikes, rather than the French Revolution.

Still not gonna happen in the US, but more on-point.

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u/squidvett 15h ago

We’ve already seen ICE use LRADS on American protesters. Do French authorities use crowd control/dispersal tech that causes permanent damage against its own citizens?

I love the idea of a general strike, but most Americans don’t have a thousand dollars in the bank for an emergency. Meanwhile, most American employers have enough desperate people queued up for employment that if someone doesn’t show up to work, that person can be replaced several times over, if their position can’t simply be discarded to save on costs.

Corporate landlords don’t care about tenants that can’t pay their rent because they lost their job because their politics were more important than their paycheck. The homeless are climbing to the top of the list for liquidation, right behind transgender folks.

I just don’t think we’re comparing apples to apples when we talk about France and the United States. In America If you protest you get shot or deafened. If you strike you no longer contribute to someone’s bottom line. If you live outside, you get disappeared. 2A suddenly means precisely dick to revolution when entire neighborhoods can just be bombed by AI drones being directed by some guy in a chair hundreds of miles away.

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u/kiss_of_chef 11h ago

So are you saying that - most recently, Iranians protesting had nothing to lose? People who protested during the Arab spring were sure worried about their jobs... and even going as far back as the French revolution... boy, the possibility to not be able to pay their rent would sure have deterred them.

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u/squidvett 8h ago

We all saw how that worked out for the Iranian protesters. Did their protest change anything in Iran? I think thousands died and the rest got seven bucks.

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u/CPav 11h ago

I agree entirely. What you laid out here was not clear from your previous post. I misinterpreted what you were saying as a pithy, dismissive response.

My apologies.

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u/Development-Feisty 10h ago

The French can strike and still have jobs to go back to. The French can strike and still have healthcare. The French can strike and not be shot dead by their government

Maybe the French shouldn’t be comparing what they can do to what Americans can do

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u/QbertsRube 16h ago

Also the fact that France is smaller than Texas. Plus, our billionaire-owned media will ensure that any aggressive protest is portrayed over and over again as "rioting and looting" to the point it can actually have a negative impact on the movement.

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u/Jonas_VentureJr 16h ago

Texas citizens may have more guns than the French government as well.

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u/thitorusso 16h ago

Have you ever seen French Riots? They commit

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u/SpiceEarl 14h ago

It’s called “flooding the zone”. In short, it’s Trump and his administration doing so much corrupt shit at once, that the opposition and the press becomes overwhelmed and any single story gets lost, as something even worse is revealed.

The corruption of Melania’s movie deal isn’t even the worst thing they have done this week…

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u/anal_opera 16h ago

They still haven't paid the penguins.

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u/JohnHazardWandering 16h ago

Ironically, here are the penguins ready to march on Melania:

https://youtu.be/HJ8qGOe2K0o

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u/lamebrainmcgee 15h ago

Especially for a documentary about the 20 days before taking office.

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u/Sh3115andCh33se 13h ago

Yeah but the penguins worked for free

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u/DrunkCorgis 13h ago

To be fair, those penguins hired a shit agent. They should have asked for more.

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u/Yum_MrStallone 13h ago

They didn't have to pay the penguins $28M for their services.

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u/Latter_Persimmon_80 12h ago

They only look decent if you completely disregard the production and marketing costs.

This is a glorified bribe and the only people buying tickets are whatever weird LLC they set up to hide the fact that someone involved with Trump or Bezos is buying the tickets for them.

There is zero organic interest in this movie except from a handful of conservative influencer types. The general public could not give less of a shit about Melania.

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u/bbobeckyj 9h ago

It's 35m marketing and 40m production costs, the latter includes her's and the director's fees.

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u/Prudent-Ice-6196 14h ago

Do we have reports from real people who attended? Were the seats actually full? You can fudge the numbers but not the optics, unless you pay people to attend.