Former first lady’s 2020 Netflix film saw a 13,000 percent increase in viewership over the weekend
The arrival of First Lady Melania Trump’s movie has appeared to cause a spike in viewership for her predecessor Michelle Obama’s own 2020 documentary, Becoming.
Over the same weekend that Melania released in theaters, Becoming saw a bump in viewership among U.S. Netflix users, according to data provider Luminate. It reported a 13,000 percent rise in views, up from the past weekend.
More than 47.5 million minutes of Becoming were viewed over Melania’s opening weekend, compared to 354,000 minutes the previous weekend. Roughly, that means Becoming was streamed more than 480,000 times, a figure calculated by dividing the time spent viewing by the film’s total run time.
While Melania was critically panned across the board, it had the biggest opening for a non-fiction feature in the last decade, grossing $7 million in ticket sales domestically.
Although the film has performed better than expected, it is still unlikely to recoup the $40 million Amazon MGM paid for it. Amazon reportedly spent an additional $35 million to market the film.
