Michelle Obama’s documentary surges on Netflix after Melania releases in theaters

The arrival of First Lady Melania Trump’s movie has appeared to cause a spike in viewership for her predecessor Michelle Obama’s own 2020 documentary, Becoming.

Over the same weekend that Melania released in theaters, Becoming saw a bump in viewership among U.S. Netflix users, according to data provider Luminate. It reported a 13,000 percent rise in views, up from the past weekend.

More than 47.5 million minutes of Becoming were viewed over Melania’s opening weekend, compared to 354,000 minutes the previous weekend. Roughly, that means Becoming was streamed more than 480,000 times, a figure calculated by dividing the time spent viewing by the film’s total run time.

While Melania was critically panned across the board, it had the biggest opening for a non-fiction feature in the last decade, grossing $7 million in ticket sales domestically.

Although the film has performed better than expected, it is still unlikely to recoup the $40 million Amazon MGM paid for it. Amazon reportedly spent an additional $35 million to market the film.

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Becoming is a behind-the-scenes documentary that follows the former first lady on her American book tour for her best-selling memoir of the same name.

Obama gives glimpses into her personal life when she goes back to her family home in Chicago and talks about her background, her relationship with her late father and meeting her husband Barack.

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Melania, meanwhile, follows the current first lady in the 20 days leading up to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. In it, Melania meets with stylists, interior designers and political allies before she is seen hand-in-hand with her husband at his swearing-in ceremony.

The project marked the return of Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, who moved to Israel following multiple sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. He has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any offenses.

According to a Rolling Stone report, two-thirds of crew members asked to have their names removed from the film’s credits.

In a one-star review for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “Perhaps Melania is merely a piece of post-modern post-entertainment. After all, it is transparently not a documentary.”

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Hilton continues: “Melania spends most scenes playing a staged version of herself, and shots of the first lady are composed with all the deliberateness Ratner brought to his work on X-Men: The Last Stand. This is somewhere between reality TV and pure fiction.”

Speaking to reporters at the film’s premiere at the Kennedy Center on 29 January, President Donald Trump played down reports of weak ticket sales.

“It’s a very tough business in theaters selling movie tickets after Covid,” he said.

“I think this will do unbelievable — streaming and everything. Theaters are a different world.”

Melania will stream on Prime Video at a later date.