Melania Trump's eponymous documentary flopped in its London debut.UK cinema chain Vue's will premier "Melania" at 3:10 p.m. at its flagship Islington theater in London, but so far only one person has bought a ticket and just two tickets have sold for a 6 p.m. showing – undercutting President Donald ...
  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    166·
    13 hours ago

    That’s because it’s a bribe, and not a documentary that’s supposed to make money, lol.

    “I’d be amazed if box office gets reported on this title,” one industry insider told The Mirror, adding that the film’s distributors might be paying a fee to cinemas to screen the movie, an established practice known as “four-walling.”

    Documentary filmmaker Stefano Da Frè, who was not involved in the film, told CNN that “data-driven” Amazon would not have invested that much expecting to lose money.

    “With all their tools, all their AI, Amazon Web Services — they didn’t just come up with that number randomly,” Da Frè said. “They believe, through their metrics, that it’s worth that amount.”

    • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
      13·
      8 hours ago

      If it gets them a new tax bill or something, it’ll be worth billions. Trump is the cheapest presidential bribe of the last 100 years, and that’s just because of inflation.

        • floofloof@lemmy.ca
          47·
          5 hours ago

          Personally, I was eager to see it and super pumped to finally learn more about this fascinating and enigmatically beautiful woman. But while I was waiting in line with hundreds of other culture lovers, George Soros came strolling along and paid each of us a thousand quid to go and watch something better instead. So I saw The Smurfs and got pie and chips. I hear he’s going to all the cinemas with these bundles of cash. Him and Obama, who was doing the cinema on the next street.

    • criss_cross@lemmy.world
      8·
      9 hours ago

      “With all their tools, all their AI, Amazon Web Services — they didn’t just come up with that number randomly,” Da Frè said. “They believe, through their metrics, that it’s worth that amount.”

      Having worked at Amazon for a couple years this is the most hilarious thing I’ve read.

      If someone L10+ wants something to happen its gonna happen metrics be damned. Lemmings will fudge numbers and just make it work. For all the bluster about LPs and such it’s a very top down culture and what VPs and above want they fucking get it.

    • gdog05@lemmy.world
      30·
      13 hours ago

      With narcissism, I think their goal is always both. They deserve the bribe and the adoration, in their minds

      • HamFistedVegan@lemmy.world
        15·
        12 hours ago

        It shows a really quite astounding lack of self awareness to even think that it’s worth having a premier in the UK.

        Had she been even remotely aware of how we (I’m from the UK) feel about her husband over here, she would know that this was inevitable.

        Her husband is universally despised in this country. Even by the Right.

    • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
      10·
      11 hours ago

      They believe they’ll get something back out of this via corruption for sure.

      I think ultimately Trump will blame Amazon for messing up the movie defeating the whole point of the exercise though.

      Amazon should have let Ellison’s companies make it because the backlash won’t have been worth it.

    • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      12 hours ago

      As you said, it’s only worth that amount as a bribe. Paying Trump directly would definitely be a problem if we had a functioning Supreme Court and Congress (or if he were a Democrat), but why not make sure that bribe has a thin veil of deniability by wrapping it up in a pretty package that’s labelled “Movie.”