Amazon blocks local theater from playing ‘Melania’ after ‘disparaging’ marquee jokes

Amazon has reportedly demanded that a local Oregon movie theater pull screenings of its documentary Melania after the establishment made a series of jokes about its controversial subject, the First Lady.

Ahead of the movie’s recent global release, the Lake Theater & Café in Lake Oswego, a suburb of Portland, lightheartedly promoted the title on its marquee, saying: “Does Melania wear Prada? Find out Friday!” and “To defeat your enemy. You must know them. Melania.”

The theater’s manager, Jordan Perry, has since said that they received a call from Amazon requesting they remove all future screenings. “The studio was not happy and/or did not appreciate my take on marketing their film to our own public,” Perry told The Oregonian.

The marquee now reads: “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.”

A source familiar with the film confirmed to Variety that Melania has indeed been blocked from the theater. The Independent has contacted Amazon for further comment.

Sharing the news on Instagram, alongside pictures of the changed marquee messaging, the Lake Theater & Café said: “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.

“Before then, we 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 Instagram statement added. “Now that it’s prematurely over, the plug pulled on us not from public outcry (always listening, thank you) but by some corporate executive (fair enough, sorry AMZN, please don’t cancel my Prime).”

On the theater’s website, Perry explained that his initial decision to show Melania was simply a matter of humor. “I thought doing so would be funny,” he 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?”

Helmed by director Brett Ratner, Melania follows Melania Trump over the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration, as she prepares to transition back to the White House.

The documentary, which the President has touted as transforming his wife into a “movie star,” has been a major critical flop, earning a measly five percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, despite viewers awarding it a 99 percent in an apparent demonstration of support for Trump.

Nick Hilton argued in his one-star review for The Independent that the “First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.”