Jimmy Kimmel Is Convinced ‘Melania’ Ticket Sales Were Rigged
What To Know
- Jimmy Kimmel questioned the legitimacy of the reported $7 million opening weekend box office for the Melania Trump documentary, suggesting possible manipulation through bulk ticket purchases.
- He drew parallels to previous instances, such as the Republican National Committee buying large quantities of Don Jr.’s book to boost its bestseller status.
- Kimmel highlighted the film’s poor critical reception, with a 5% Rotten Tomatoes rating, while humorously noting its unusually high audience score.
Jimmy Kimmel has some doubts over the reported $7 million the Melania Trump documentary made at the box office in its opening weekend.
“Speaking of rigged outcomes,” the late-night host said on Wednesday’s (February 4) edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “The Melania documentary allegedly exceeded box office expectations. They had the best opening for a non-musical documentary in ten years, which I think is a fancy way of saying it only lost tens of millions of dollars.”
He continued, “A lot of people, myself included, have been wondering how this movie managed to sell $7 million worth of tickets last weekend when almost every theater seemed to be empty leading up to the release.”
The comedian went on to say there are now reports of “bulk ticket purchases” that may have helped boost numbers.
“And if you don’t believe this is the kind of thing they would do, you may be forgetting that back in 2019, the Republican National Committee bought $100,000 worth of Don Jr.’s book to put in swag bags to make it a New York Times bestseller,” Kimmel added.
“Don Jr.’s book debuted number one on the New York Times bestseller list despite the fact that no one has ever read it,” he quipped. “No one has ever even opened that book. It might be filled with blank pages. We’ll never know.”
Kimmel went on to say how sources claim that blocks of tickets to Melania “were purchased and then distributed to Republican activists and senior citizens’ homes, which are really the same thing.”
He then turned his attention to the movie’s reviews, noting that it has a 5% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. “That is very low. To put that in perspective, that is 1 percent lower than Gigli,” Kimmel added, referencing the widely panned Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez rom-com crime film.
“But that’s just what the loser and hater critics had to say,” he continued. “The audience score is 99 percent positive, which is 1 percent higher than The Godfather. And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with that at all.”
He then mocked Trump’s calls of 2020 election rigging, saying, “We need to get to the bottom of this. Send in Tulsi Gabbard and the FBI. Seize the ticket machines, the popcorn buckets, the box office receipts at every multiplex in America!”
You can watch Kimmel’s full opening monologue in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Weeknights, 11:35/10:35c, ABC
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