Amazon announced Sunday that its streaming service Prime Video will release a “behind the scenes” documentary about Melania Trump’s life.
The film will be released in theaters in the second half of this year and streamed on Amazon Prime, the company said in a statement. Mrs. Trump will serve as executive producer on the documentary, which began filming in December, the month after her husband, Donald J. Trump, won the presidential election.
Amazon said it was “excited to share this truly unique story.”
The company and its founder, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, had a rocky relationship with Trump during his first term as president. But in recent months, Amazon and Bezos have taken steps to fix that. The tech giant announced last month that it would donate $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund, writing a check to the inaugural committee along with Mehta and other Silicon Valley company executives. Bezos is “very optimistic” about Trump’s new term and is eager to work with the administration to reduce regulations.
During his first term as president, Trump criticized Bezos for the newspaper’s political coverage and questioned whether the U.S. Postal Service was charging Amazon too little for shipping. Amazon responded by accusing Trump of putting “undue pressure” on the Pentagon to deny the company a cloud computing contract.
Amazon now appears to be turning the page.
In October, the paper announced it would stop supporting presidential candidates due to Bezos’ decision, and did not publish a statement of support for Vice President Kamala Harris that had already been drafted. Bezos defended his decision, saying the newspaper’s endorsement “creates a perception of bias.”
Last week, Post cartoonist Ann Ternas published a cartoon depicting Bezos and three other tech executives kneeling at a statue of Trump and offering the president-elect a bag of his own. He announced that he would resign after being rejected in the newspaper’s opinion section. money. The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, said the cartoon was rejected because the section runs a column on the same topic and had already scheduled another column. He said he called on Ternaes to rescind his resignation, saying “the only prejudice is against repetition.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its efforts to forge a closer relationship with Trump. President Trump’s transition team also did not respond to requests for comment.
Mrs. Trump has recently shown a willingness to share details of her life with the public. Last year, she published a memoir about her modeling career, her marriage to Trump and her time in the White House. It reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Her role as the documentary’s executive producer suggests she will have some influence on how the documentary depicts her life.
Brett Ratner, director and producer of films such as “Rush Hour” and “The Revenant,” will direct the documentary. Mr. Ratner has kept a low profile in recent years after questions arose about his actions. In 2011, he resigned as co-producer of the Oscars broadcast after using an anti-gay slur at a public event. In 2017, Ratner was accused of sexual misconduct by six women in a Los Angeles Times article, which he claims he denies.
Amazon, which has exclusive rights to the film about Mrs. Trump, said it would reveal more details about the project as filming progresses and release plans are finalized.
