HAH!: ‘Melania’ ‘A’ CinemaScore & $8M+ Record Docu Debut In Decade

...While Iron Lung is expected to fall hard on Sunday by as much as -40% from its Saturday take, what could help it is if Amazon MGM Studios’ documentary Melania steals more women away from Send Help.

Now, Melania is still seeing $8.1M, but the exit scores are quite royal with an A CinemaScore, 5 stars on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, and get this — an 89% definite recommend; unheard for any movie. If a movie is in the 70 percentile range, that’s outstanding. While a figure like that indicates a stampede for a tentpole, it’s interesting to see whether this documentary can overperform even more than it already is, especially off its older crowd. The turnout here for the Brett Ratner-directed nonfiction film is akin to that of a faith-based movie: 72% women, with 72% over 55. Audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 99% while critics have bashed the movie at 6%. Melania is playing best in the South (12% over the norm) and South Central with the Cinemark Palace 21 in Boca Raton, FL the pic’s current highest grossing location with over $10K. Pic’s top grossing markets are Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, Miami, Minnesota, Nashville, Jackson, MI; St. Louis, Las Vegas, Cleveland — the list goes on…no NYC or LA in this bunch. Diversity demos on this one is 74% Caucasian, 11% Latino and Hispanic, 4% Black, 4% Asian American and 7% Native American/other.

In PostTrak exits for Melania, 49% identified as Republicans, 47% said they were politically conservative, Evangelical Christians made up 28% of those attending while Democrats repped 2% of the audience.

Walk-up business is sold with 52% of the audience buying their tickets to Melania same day versus say Iron Lung which was 38% (many always believed the Markiplier movie would be frontloaded). Don’t say linear is dead: For the Melania crowd, 22% said that TV ads were the most influential form of advertisement, but they also cited social media as being a big influencer at 23%.

Interesting to note that among the streaming subscribers attending Melania this weekend, 54% were Prime Members, 53% Netflix, 24% Apple TV and 22% a piece for Hulu and Disney+ subs.