Jaw-dropping amount Amazon is paying for Melania Trump documentary

Amazon will pay as much as $40 million to license Brett Ratner’s documentary about Melania Trump, according to a new report.

The documentary, directed by Ratner, was announced Sunday and will be released in the second half of 2025, during her husband’s administration.

Melania, 54, is the executive producer of the production, and Jeff Bezos’ film and television studio is reportedly spending the big bucks on licensing rights.

After the announcement, sources familiar with the matter revealed the amount Puksaying the deal also includes a follow-up docuseries.

It is unclear what Melania will be paid personally for the project.

The film and docuseries will be released on Prime Video, and the film will also be released in theaters for some time, the insiders said.

The docuseries will reportedly consist of two or three episodes, with Melania closely involved. Filming on the documentary began last month and will continue throughout Trump’s presidency.

Disney and Paramount have reportedly lost streaming rights after a bidding war with Amazon, which is owned by the world’s second-richest man. Neither Netflix nor Apple participated, the sources said.

“We are excited to share this truly unique story with our millions of customers around the world,” an Amazon spokesperson added of the production. More details will be shared later.

The high-profile partnership comes at a time when Washington is the biggest story in the world, and a day after aides told Status that Bezos’ Washington Post, for which he paid a quarter of a billion dollars, is about to be hit. with layoffs.

One source said the layoffs will only affect the newspaper’s “business division,” and another said they will be “profound” and affect “dozens of employees.”

Both said they will take place sometime this week as part of an ongoing effort to cut costs ahead of the new administration.

Months earlier, weeks before the election, the billionaire broke with tradition and blocked The Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.

The move led to more than 250,000 readers immediately canceling their subscriptions, after which Bezos wrote an op-ed defending the decision.

In it, the 60-year-old cited growing “distrust” of the media and said it was the “principled” and “right” decision for the Post not to get involved.

“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,” he wrote at the time, after decades of promoting Democrats.

The Melania documentary will give viewers an “unprecedented look behind the scenes” into her life, which began in 1970s Slovenia.

She was then known as Melanija Knavs and started working as a fashion model at the age of 16.

She changed the spelling of her name to Melania Knauss as she sought more work across Europe, before moving to the US in 1996. There she worked as a model in Manhattan, then the territory of the future president.

The couple met in 1998 before marrying in 2005, after which she gave Trump his fifth and final child, Barron, in 2006.

Trump emigrated to the US in 1996 to work as a model in Manhattan and was introduced to her future husband in 1998.

She published a memoir, Melania, a few months ago, as media companies across the country continue to try to capitalize on her husband’s impending presidency.

It has topped the New York Times best-selling list since its release in early October, before her husband’s big win over Harris.

Since then, media companies ranging from MSNBC to The Walt Disney Corporation have attempted to kiss the president-elect’s proverbial ring, with Bezos seemingly taking note of the changing tide in the days prior, with the nixed endorsement.

The same went for Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who notably refused to support Trump, Harris and Joe Biden in the run-up to the election.

Asked about the issue over the summer, he instead praised Trump for surviving his then-recent assassination attempt.

“Seeing Donald Trump stand up after being shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Zuckerberg, 40, said. during an interview with Meta. Headquarters in Menlo Park.

“On some level, it’s hard for an American not to get emotional about that spirit and that fight,” the Facebook founder added.

“And I think that’s why a lot of people like him.”

Now, following Trump’s victory, Zuckerberg — who has been accused by the president-elect of conspiring against him in the 2020 election — is in the midst of acquiescing to years of Republican Party complaints about former policies.

Just this morning, in a five-minute video message shared on his personal Facebook profile, he admitted that Meta and Facebook had censored conservative opinions in recent years.

“We are going back to our roots and focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms,” he said in the self-filmed statement.

“More specifically, we will abolish fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US.”

Days earlier, he appointed UFC boss Dana White, a known friend of Trump, to Meta’s board after appointing former Lib Dem UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as the company’s president.

The billionaire pair’s abrupt policy shift was recently satirized by Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes with a sketch of a group of media executives bowing to Trump while offering him bags of money.

In attendance were postal owner Bezos and Mickey Mouse to represent Disney.

She said she wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “the top tech and media billionaire executives who have done their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”

She quit after an editor at the newspaper refused to run the sketch, which was done on Friday.

In December, weeks after Trump’s victory, Walt Disney Co. a settlement in a defamation lawsuit brought by the president-elect against ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely said on air that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in a New York civil lawsuit.

The Disney company subsequently faced accusations of caving to conservatives, a common theme in the run-up to his impending second presidency.

Melania is now also benefiting, after insiders told News Nation that despite topping the Amazon bestseller list, she had not paid a deposit for her October autobiography.

By comparison, fellow former First Lady Hillary Clinton made $8 million upfront from her memoir — and another $5 million in royalties — while Michelle Obama and her husband received about $65 million in a joint deal for their books in 2017.

Skyhorse Publishing, the company behind the 198-page memoir – which costs ($250 for a collector’s edition, $150 for a signed copy and $40 for a regular copy) – has reportedly asked CNN to pay $250,000 for an interview before the book’s release.

CNN said in October that it had received the request and agreed to it, before Skyhorse circled back to claim the request was a mistake.

Beforehand, the book’s publisher asked CNN and all employees who participated in the interview to sign a nondisclosure agreement that would entitle Melania or the publisher to damages of “$100,000” for any infringement.

Skyhorse still claims the request was sent in error, despite the $250,000 requested being consistent with other appearances Melania has made in 2024.

This is a development story; check for updates.