Amazon is set to release its authorised documentary about Melania in more than 100 UK cinemas this Friday, with the film marketed as offering “unprecedented access” to the 20 days leading up to the 2025 residential Inauguration through the eyes of the first lady.
Melania will be up against a slate of releases, including the Jason Statham action film Shelter, the ape horror Primate, and Bradley Cooper’s comedy-drama Is This Thing On?
Meanwhile, cinema goers will also have swathes of other options from earlier releases, including Sydney Sweeney’s latest offering The Housemaid, Timothee Chalamet’s Marty Supreme and the latest instalment of the 28 Days Later franchise with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
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UK ticket sales for Melania have so far “soft”, according to Tim Richards, the chief executive of Vue, one of the country’s biggest cinema operators and it seems the lack of interest in the Melania documentary has extended to Scotland.
Analysis of ticket sales by The National has found hundreds of seats have been left empty in the run-up to its release with the Vue in Edinburgh’s Omni Centre only selling two tickets despite having 450 seats available.
The Vue’s Edinburgh city centre branch has four screenings over Friday, Saturday and Sunday that are completely empty with only one seat sold for the opening screening in its massive 151-seat capacity theatre.
The only other seat sold, as of 1pm on Wednesday, was for the 9.40pm showing on Sunday, meaning Melania has only filled 0.44% of seats available on its first three days of showings at the Omni Centre.
In Glasgow, sales were not much better.
The Vue’s St Enoch’s branch had a total of eight screenings over the first three days, but only sold 17 tickets despite having a capacity of 392 seats. This means only 4.33% of the seats available have been filled.
Friday’s debut of Melania at 1.20pm has yet to sell a single ticket, with two other screenings completely empty as of Wednesday.
Sunday’s 6pm showing is the busiest for the Glasgow city centre branch, with a whopping six seats filled.
Elsewhere, Cineworld’s Queens Links branch in Aberdeen seems to have more tickets sold at a glance.
According to the chain’s online booking system, only seven seats have been “booked,” but a further 47 were labelled as “unavailable”.
According to theories by cinema goers online, Cineworld uses the label “unavailable” on seats which have either been sold, pending sale or reserved, or that something is wrong with the seat.
Melania has four screenings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with 766 seats dedicated to the film. Meaning that with the confirmed “booked” seats, less than 1% of the total seating allocation has been claimed.
Scottish cinema goers in some cities won’t have the possibility of seeing Melania as some chains like Odeon aren’t showing it across any of their theaters.
Although Cineworld has some screenings in its Scottish cinemas, places like Dundee where it has a branch, don’t have any showings.
From The National’s snapshot analysis of the three cinemas from three of Scotland’s largest cities, only 26 tickets have been sold out of 1608 available seats.
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