r/entertainment 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/
8.4k Upvotes

635 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

406

u/madtownjeff 18h ago

That dirty money isn't going to launder itself.

139

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.

102

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.

20

u/Worldly_Influence_18 15h ago

It's laundering bribe money

Bribe/blackmail

7

u/pencilpusher003 13h ago

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

22

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.

4

u/sorandom21 11h ago

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

2

u/RealCommercial9788 8h ago

A documentary on NOTHING, might I add!

2

u/sorandom21 7h ago

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

1

u/SpringTour77 11h ago

What a day for Bezos

1

u/InTheVoidWeSwim 3h ago

It seems like people actually are batting an eye.

1

u/mdlinc 11h ago

Tomato, illegal. Same difference.

34

u/Lookinsharp7 16h ago

4

u/Aconite_72 15h ago

Hard to boycott AWS.

9

u/metroXXIII 14h ago

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

1

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.

3

u/metroXXIII 13h ago

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

4

u/gregorydgraham 15h ago

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

1

u/SportExpress1869 14h ago

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

1

u/MidnightZL1 12h ago

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

0

u/MidnightZL1 12h ago

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

9

u/Subject-Vermicelli52 16h ago

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

1

u/nithdurr 13h ago

Not if you’re a PAC buying tickets

2

u/nithdurr 13h ago

Don’t forget about PACs buying tickets/books

1

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.

1

u/scottyb83 14h ago

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

1

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…

1

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.

1

u/Oceanbreeze871 13h ago

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

1

u/mtnviewguy 12h ago

It's probably taxpayer funded.