MELANIA Did Better at Box Office Than New Tom Cruise Bomb, First Lady’s Top Advisor Boasts

(Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

A senior advisor to First Lady Melania Trump boasted about her documentary performing relatively better in the box office than Tom Cruise’s latest movie.

Digger, starring Cruise and directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, released last weekend. While the movie received generally favorable reviews from audiences, the environmental satire proved to be divisive among critics. At the time of writing, Digger held an audience score of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. The critic score, on the other hand, sat at just 51%.

Although general audiences appeared to mostly enjoy the movie, it was not reflected in the box office. According to a report from DEADLINE, Digger earned just $20 million globally in its opening weekend against an estimated budget of $160 million. Of that $20 million, just $8 million came from domestic audiences. It was Cruise’s lowest opening weekend in nearly two decades.

Should Digger make it to $50 million, DEADLINE noted, the movie would still lose approximately $150 million.

MELANIA, the documentary focused on the first lady, fared better relative to its budget and how many theaters actually picked it up. In a Tuesday morning tweet, Senior Advisor Marc Beckman said:

MELANIA, The Film // By The Numbers

On a per-theater basis, MELANIA outperformed Tom Cruise’s DIGGER by approximately 67%, despite opening in roughly half as many theaters.

(Digger played in 1,543 more theaters than MELANIA.)

Still, MELANIA was also a flop by all metrics. Although the movie achieved the highest opening for a non-fiction film in a decade, it only earned an estimated $16.7 million during its theatrical run. Amazon reportedly paid $40 million for the documentary, then spent another $35 million to market it.

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