Amazon reportedly asked an Oregon theater to stop screening the Melania documentary. The request came after the theater took a light-hearted jab at the movie in its promotional messages on the marquee.
Amazon pulled Melania documentary from theater
According to a report by The Oregonian, Amazon asked The Lake Theater and Cafe in Lake Oswego to pull Melania after it took a jab at the documentary. The Oregon theater is known for poking fun at movies as a marketing tactic, and the controversial Amazon MGM documentary was no exception.
The theater promoted the documentary with humorous statements such as “Does Melania wear Prada? Find out Friday.” They also quoted from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, saying, “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.”
However, Amazon was reportedly not pleased with the advertisement. The then manager of the theater, Jordan Perry, shared that they received a call from a higher-up at Amazon.
“The studio was not happy and/or did not appreciate my take on marketing their film to our own public,” Perry shared. After the call from Amazon, they changed the statement on the marquee to: “Amazon called. Our marquee made them mad. All Melania showings cancelled. Show your support at Whole Foods instead.” This was followed by “Join Amazon Prime for Free Two-Day Shipping.”
Prior to this, local residents had begun criticizing the theaters for choosing to screen Melania in the first place. In an Instagram post on February 2, The Lake Theater shared, “Also got, before then, 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.”
Speaking with The Oregonian, Perry revealed the reason why he brought the Melania documentary to the theater. He stated, “Wouldn’t it then be exponentially weirder, to the point of being funny, to show (’Melania’) here, at your obviously anti-establishment, occasionally troublemaking, neighborhood cinema?”
Melania, the documentary, arrived in US theaters on January 30, 2026. It follows the First Lady over the 20 days leading up to Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration.
