Amazon to Produce Melania Documentary... Streaming Trump Inauguration Ceremony

Fundraising Approaches 300 Billion Won Since Trump Election

Recently, e-commerce giant Amazon, which has been closely aligning itself with President-elect Donald Trump, has embarked on producing a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump.

An Amazon spokesperson announced on the 5th (local time) that the company’s streaming platform, Prime Video, has secured exclusive rights to screen and stream the documentary film about Melania Trump, stating that it will "offer viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the First Lady."

Reuters Yonhap News

Filming of the documentary began in December last year and is expected to be released in the second half of this year. Argentine filmmaker Fernando Sulichin is serving as the executive producer, while director Brett Ratner, known for the "Rush Hour" series and "X-Men: The Last Stand," is directing the film.

Director Ratner is a figure who was ousted from the film industry following multiple sexual harassment allegations during the height of the 2017 "Me Too" movement.

Local media view this documentary production decision as part of Amazon’s recent efforts to curry favor with President-elect Trump. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last month for a dinner and also pledged to donate $1 million (approximately 1.5 billion KRW) to Trump’s inauguration. Amazon Prime Video is also scheduled to broadcast Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

Getty Images Yonhap News

At Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida, known as Trump’s "Winter White House," a continuous "pilgrimage" of big tech leaders seeking to win his favor has been ongoing. Besides founder Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have either donated or pledged to donate $1 million each to Trump’s inauguration committee.

According to sources from The New York Times (NYT), in the two months following Trump’s election victory in November last year, personal and corporate donations raised for Trump’s inauguration, policy operations, and presidential library construction have surpassed $200 million (approximately 294.2 billion KRW). Of this, $150 million (220 billion KRW) was raised specifically for Trump’s inauguration committee, already exceeding the $107 million (157.5 billion KRW) raised for Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

At the Washington Post (WP), owned by Bezos, a cartoonist resigned recently after the paper refused to publish a satirical cartoon mocking tech industry moguls’ attempts to "curry favor with Trump."