Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered desperate praise for his Melania movie and insisted the documentary about the first lady was a hit.
In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, the billionaire was pressed on whether his company greenlit the film, which was panned by critics and flopped at the box office, in order to curry favor with President Donald Trump.
Bezos described the claims as a “falsehood that will not die” while touting the apparent success of Melania—a movie that cost a total of $75 million to produce and promote and made just over $16 million at the box office.
“We have denied it. Melania’s office has denied it. It’s not true. I had nothing to do with that,” Bezos said.
“By the way, it appears it was a good business decision because it did very well in theaters, it’s done very well on streaming. People are very curious about Melania, so even though I had nothing to do with it, it appears that the Amazon team made a very wise business decision,” Bezos added.
The movie, which follows Melania during the 20 days leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, was released in cinemas in January to little fanfare.
In addition to the dire box office numbers, the film received numerous scathing reviews from critics. One of those came from Kevin Fallon, editor-at-large at the Daily Beast’s Obsessed, who declared the film an “abomination.”
“Of course, everyone knew the film, directed for an obscene amount of money by notorious sex pest Brett Ratner, was going to be bad. It’s the specific kind of bad I was on a fact-finding mission for,” Fallon wrote.
“Melania is a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it’s so expected and utterly pointless.”
In March, a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, wrote a letter to Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy asking whether Melania was a “box office gamble or bribe” or part of a “pay-to-play arrangement” with the Trump administration.
Elsewhere in his Squawk Box interview, Bezos reiterated that claims the movie was a way of “buying influence” were “just not correct.”
“I can see why people say this,” he added.
When Melania arrived on Amazon’s streaming service Prime, it was placed seventh in the top 10 streaming movies during its first week, with 230 million minutes viewed, according to Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings.
