A top adviser to Melania Trump took a victory lap this week over Tom Cruise's newest box office bomb. He argued that the first lady's widely panned documentary did better business.
Marc Beckman, the first lady's senior adviser and a producer on "Melania," posted the comparison on X on Tuesday.
"On a per-theater basis, MELANIA outperformed Tom Cruise's DIGGER by approximately 67%, despite opening in roughly half as many theaters," Beckman wrote. "(Digger played in 1,543 more theaters than MELANIA.)"
"Digger" is a satirical black comedy from Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose drilling sets off a climate disaster. The film earned $8 million domestically and $20 million worldwide in its opening weekend, according to The Daily Beast, which cited Deadline's report of a $160 million budget. It was Cruise's weakest opening in nearly two decades.
Beckman's boast leaves a few things out, according to reports.
"Melania" opened to just over $7 million, less than "Digger," and finished its run with about $16.6 million worldwide, The Daily Beast reported. Amazon reportedly spent $75 million on the project. The Mirror broke that down as $40 million for production and $35 million for marketing.
Critics weren't impressed either. The Brett Ratner-directed film holds a 9 percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, according to The Mirror. Its 99 percent audience score, driven largely by the first lady's fans, is the biggest gap between the two scores in the site's history. The Daily Beast's review called the film an "abomination of filmmaking."
Beckman has praised the project before.
"To me, the most heartwarming sentiment is that everybody embraced our first lady," he told Fox News after the January premiere.
Melania Trump has since announced a new Amazon Prime Video docuseries about her life, which she hinted could arrive in November, The Daily Beast reported.
HuffPost called the Melania aide's brag a "weird film flex."
