Amazon pulled the “Melania” documentary from an Oregon movie theater after its marquee featured jokes about the film, including, “Does Melania wear Prada? Find out Friday!” according to reports.
Lake Theater and Cafe in Lake Oswego said executives at Amazon were infuriated over the advertisements that also featured “To defeat your enemy. You must know them. Melania starts Friday,” in a reference to Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” according to Variety.
“Got a call that the higher ups (i.e., at Amazon) were upset with how our marquee marketed their movie (i.e., Melania), that, per them, Sunday would be its last day here,” the Lake Theater and Cafe wrote in a statement on Instagram.
Amazon MGM Studios purchased the rights to produce and distribute the film, directed by Brett Ratner, for $40 million in 2025.
Manager Jordan Perry told the Oregonian that the theater received a call from Amazon to have the film pulled over the cheeky marquee. “The studio was not happy and/or did not appreciate my take on marketing their film to our own public,” he told the outlet.
Perry expressed to the outlet that he wasn’t entirely upset by the move to pull the film, noting in the Instagram statement that the theater got “countless emails and voicemails and Google/Yelp reviews (Google/Yelp took them down), wondering why the hell we had Melania here, or disdaining our disparaging of her.”
The marquee was subsequently changed to say “Amazon called. Our marquee made them mad. All “Melania” showings cancelled. Show your support at Whole Foods instead. Join Amazon Prime for Free Two-Day Shipping,” according to a photo posted to social media.
Perry further expressed in a blog post that the decision to show “Melania,” was intended to “be funny” during a slow movie week.
“So, to fill a screen, why not get this inexplicable vanity piece from the current president’s wife?” Perry wrote.
“Wouldn’t it be exponentially weirder, to the point of being funny, to show ‘Melania’ here, at your obviously anti-establishment, occasionally troublemaking, neighborhood cinema?” the manager added.
The “Melania” movie opened to the best box office numbers for a documentary in a decade after premiering last week in close to 1,800 screens nationwide.
The Amazon MGM Studios’ production chronicles the 20 days leading up to the first lady’s return to the White House for President Trump’s second term.
Amazon did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“If you came to see Melania here and bought an $11 ticket, $5.50 of that would go to Amazon,” Perry continued in the blog post.
“We contributed, in all, $196 to the Jeff Bezos Trust Fund this week (far more to the Hamnet Trust Fund, thank you, Hamnet lovers). Jeff Bezos won’t notice the $196. He wouldn’t notice $1,960, though someone on his team noticed our marquee.”
