Hollywood keeps telling us that audiences don’t want to see Melania Trump on screen.
The critics said the same thing — right up until real Americans bought tickets in record numbers and gave the film a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
And now Amazon is going back for more, announcing a full docuseries on First Lady Melania Trump set to drop this fall on Prime Video — and the establishment media is already scrambling to figure out how to spin it.
What Amazon Just Announced
Marc Beckman, senior adviser to the First Lady, made the announcement during an interview on Real America’s Voice.
“We are launching a docuseries, which is a total different experience, completely new, on Amazon Prime exclusively,” Beckman said. “That will be coming this fall. It’s confirmed, and I hope everybody tunes in, because it’s going to show a part of the first lady that hasn’t been seen yet.”
Beckman told Real America’s Voice host Eric Bolling that the project is a “completely different look at her world” compared to the Brett Ratner-directed film, and that while the original Melania chronicled the 20 days leading up to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the new show will follow Melania at the beginning of her husband’s second term.
“We open the window, a little bit, into her private life, her marriage, her family,” Beckman explained. “We open a little deeper into her career, as well as her philanthropy, but with the docuseries, it’s a little bit different.”
According to Deadline, Amazon’s original licensing agreement already included rights to a companion documentary series, making the television project part of the company’s original investment. Amazon MGM Studios had confirmed plans for the series before the film even hit theaters.
No release date beyond a general fall 2026 window has been announced, and Melania Trump herself has not publicly commented on the new project.
The Numbers Behind the First Film
Liberal media critics panned the original Melania.
But the critics’ numbers told only part of the story.
The critics’ score for Melania on Rotten Tomatoes landed at an abysmal 6 percent. The documentary’s audience score was an incredible 99 percent. Rotten Tomatoes confirmed it was the biggest critics-versus-audience split in the site’s history.
“There has been NO manipulation on the audience reviews for the Melania documentary,” Rotten Tomatoes told The Hollywood Reporter. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film through Fandango.”
That gap tells you something. The people who actually paid to sit in a theater and watch the film loved it. The credentialed critics who get paid to shape opinion hated it. Draw your own conclusions about whose judgment is worth more.
Amazon MGM’s distribution chief Kevin Wilson said the documentary’s opening weekend was seen as “a critical first moment that validates our holistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.” The studio further said it plans “to recoup some of the cost of the film when it streams on Prime Video through advertising and Prime signups.”
The Bigger Picture Behind Amazon’s Bet
First Lady Melania Trump launched her own production company, Muse Films, timed to coincide with the premiere of the documentary. During President Donald Trump’s first term, “Muse” was the codename the United States Secret Service assigned to the First Lady.
The timing of the docuseries announcement is notable given Melania Trump’s broader expansion into the entertainment industry, having recently launched Muse Films, whose name appears to reference her Secret Service code name.
And then there is the Jeff Bezos question.
The project drew attention because of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ increasingly warm relationship with President Donald Trump. Critics questioned whether the acquisition was intended to improve ties with the administration.
Bezos pushed back hard. “The ‘Melania’ thing is a falsehood that will not die,” Bezos said. “I see it reported all the time that somehow, I was involved in this.”
Bezos said during a CNBC interview that the acquisition was “a good business decision” and that he was not personally involved in the negotiations.
“We disagree with any suggestion that Amazon’s decision to license this film and accompanying series was improper. We regularly release documentaries that offer unique perspectives on cultural and historical figures across the political spectrum,” Amazon Vice President of Public Policy Brian Huseman said in a statement in March.
Whether you take that at face value or not, the business reality is straightforward. Amazon is sitting on a streaming platform with hundreds of millions of subscribers, and a docuseries about the most scrutinized and least-understood First Lady in modern history is not a hard sell to that audience — regardless of what the critics think.
The press spent months treating the original film’s box office performance as proof that the American public didn’t want to see Melania Trump’s story. But 99% audience approval and a record-breaking opening for a documentary don’t exactly support that conclusion. What it actually proved is that ordinary Americans and the entertainment press are living in completely different realities right now.
And Amazon, whatever its motivations, is betting that the audience reality is the one that matters when the streaming numbers come in.
A financial disclosure report released by the US Office of Government Ethics revealed Melania earned the Trumps $10.71 million in proceeds from the film’s license agreement.
The First Lady has built something real here. A production company bearing her Secret Service codename, a film that shattered documentary audience records, and now a follow-up series coming this fall. The media narrative keeps insisting this is a story about failure. The audience keeps voting otherwise.
Fall 2026 will settle the argument.
Sources: Mediaite, Real America’s Voice (via Marc Beckman interview), Newsweek, RSB Network, The Hollywood Reporter, Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo, The Wrap, Deadline, CNBC Squawk Box