Melania Trump documentary directed by Brett Ratner announced

Melania Trump is set to star in a new documentary on Amazon Prime Video, directed by Brett Ratner.

The reclusive wife of US president-elect Donald Trump will give viewers an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes look” at the life of the former and future first lady.

Despite being married to Donald Trump, the 54-year-old Slovenian-American former model has been comparatively bashful when it comes to the media appearances.

In the build up to her husband’s second term as US president, she has opened herself more to the media; first with a sparse 180-page memoir titled ‘Melania’ last year and now the upcoming series, set to release in the second half of 2025.

Trump has served as an executive producer for the documentary, which was filmed in December 2024. “We are excited to share this truly unique story with our millions of customers around the world,” Amazon said in a statement.

The choice of Brett Ratner as director has sparked controversy. Ratner, best known for directing the Rush Hour trilogy, hasn’t directed a film since 2014’s Hercules.

In 2017, Ratner was one of the first people to be accused of sexual assault as part of the the #MeToo movement. Six women, including Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, accused Ratner of multiple crimes, including sexual assault and harassment. Additionally, he has been accused of rape by a former talent agency employee, the actor Elliot Page has accused Ratner of sexual harassment, and a former fashion model claimed he coerced her into a sex act.

Ratner has denied all the allegations.

This documentary signifies another key connection between one of America’s most influential billionaires and Donald Trump, this time with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Bezos has already announced that Amazon will donate $1 million (€950,000) to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed in December.

The e-commerce giant will also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, which is viewed as a separate in-kind donation – worth another $1 million.

This represents a shift in tone between the two men. Bezos previously criticised Trump’s rhetoric – while Trump attacked political coverage at The Washington Post during his first term. Bezos has owned the paper since 2013.

In December, Bezos expressed some excitement about potential regulatory cutbacks in the coming years and said he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term.

Bezos in October did not allow the Post to endorse a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and to protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. This weekend, a cartoonist quit her job after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before the president-elect.

In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract.

Amazon’s announcement came after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said earlier in the day that it had donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that he would also donate $1 million to the president-elect’s inauguration.

Cook, Zuckerberg and Bezos seem to now have fallen in rank with fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk in coveting Donald Trump’s favour. While his first term was defined by a raft of anti-Trump media, could the new documentary on Bezos’ platform signal a change for what will be produced in the future?