INANIMATE CARBON GOD

Remember that “documentary” about the current Mrs Trump? It is now bidding fair to be one of the worst box office tankers of all time, having cost an obscene $40m (which NO documentary should ever cost; apparently nearly three-quarters of that amount went to its subject) plus an alleged $35m extra for marketing. It looks like it will return almost none of that investment. From the Graun:

UK ticket sales for Melania are so far “soft”, according to Tim Richards, the chief executive of Vue, one of the country’s biggest cinema operators. Just one ticket has been sold for the first 3.10pm screening on Friday at its flagship Islington branch in London, while two have been booked for 6pm.
At the time of publication, all seats remained available for the 28 screenings of Melania at the Blackburn, Castleford and Hamilton branches.
The picture was slightly rosier at the Cineworld in Wandsworth, which had sold four tickets, while five backrow seats were also booked at the Cineworld in Broughton. […]
One industry analyst told the Guardian they suspected the underlying strategy was “four-walling”, meaning distributors pay a set fee to each cinema if they agree to play a certain title.
This would explain why so many exhibitors – which usually adopt a revenue-sharing model with distributors – have agreed to take on a movie with such modest financial prospects at a time when award-nominated films are vying for screen time.
“I’d be amazed if box office gets reported on this title,” added the pundit, who wished to remain anonymous.

I’m sure the box office will be reported… it’s just that the report will be a complete lie. The regime is so full of shit about everything else, it’s not going to be honest about this either… It is being shown in Australia, too, but, per Channel 9, it’s doing about as badly here as in the UK:

At its one screening this Friday at Sydney’s Hoyts Warringah Mall, not a single ticket has been sold. In Cronulla, one person is going.
At three cinemas in Melbourne, nobody has reserved a seat. Two tickets have been sold at a fourth.
Most people don’t buy movie tickets several days ahead of time, so the true reception won’t be known until Friday.
But a lack of pre-sales does indicate a lack of interest.

The other thing the film has lacked, apparently, is critic previews, which is never a good sign for any film and is a worse sign than normal for this particular one. And the behind the scenes stuff that’s coming out thanks to Rolling Stone is illuminating, too:

One person familiar with the production estimated that some two-thirds of the crew members who worked on the film in New York had requested not to have their names formally credited on the documentary. A separate person who will be credited on the film said that, after experiencing the first year of Trump’s second term, they now wish they had not put their name on it. “I’m much more alarmed now than I was a year ago,” that person said.
People who worked on the film said they had fewer problems working with Melania Trump herself, who was described as friendly and very engaged in the process, than they did with the director, Brett Ratner. (“She was totally nice,” one person said. “She was the opposite of Brett Ratner.”) […]
“I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the propaganda element of this,” one member of the production team said. “But Brett Ratner was the worst part of working on this project.” That person said they weren’t aware of Ratner’s involvement until just days before filming began, and they would not have accepted the job if they’d known.

Ah, Brett Ratner, the accused sexual predator who hasn’t made a film since 2014 cos he fled to Israel after those accusations… sex pests look after one another, don’t they… That’s another thing putting people off, apart from the film’s subject matter… I do see some comments saying not to write it off, it could do more than the expected $5m the most optimistic prediction was suggesting; that Reagan hagiography a couple of years ago took some $30m at the box office despite the critical drubbing it got because enough of the Cult went to see it out of sacred duty. Mind you, that still wasn’t enough for that film to make a profit, and I don’t see the Melania thing achieving that either… what, $75m allegedly spent on this thing in an industry where a film usually has to bring in three or so times its cost before it’s considered a profitable success? I don’t see a documentary doing that, especially this one, even on Amazon Prime where it will soon be dumped.

But so what, really? What is $75 million to Jeff Bezos, a man with a fortune just shy of $250 billion? Small change at best, three ten-thousandths of his overall wealth. The Melania film will probably do OK on Prime, but will almost certainly never recover its costs cos the Cult isn’t that big, but Bezos will never notice and profit wasn’t the point here anyway: it was only ever a colossal suck-up to the regime, for Bezos to curry favour with Mushroom Cock, and as long as the latter has his monument that’s all that matters. I do suspect, mind you, that a large part of whatever audience the film gets will wind up being liberals hate-watching it; I just hope that, like me, if they do that, they also plan to pirate the thing rather than pay for it…