We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings!There's been a lot of discussion of the $7 million box office opening of the First Lady profile documentary "Melania" — especially in the context of Amazon MGM paying $40 million for the rights and another $35 million to market the film. But less discussed is how anomalous "Melania" is in the context of other political documentaries. Long gone are the days when a film like Michael Moore’s George W. Bush takedown “Fahrenheit 9/11” could cross $220 million in 2004, or when political documentaries flourished during the 2010s. Political docs have virtually no presence in theaters and are rare on streaming platforms that focus instead on things like"The Greatest Night in Pop." Our Jeremy Fuster noted that out of this year's batch of Oscar-nominated docs, none were released widely, getting short runs for awards eligibility. "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" screened in two theaters, grossing just under $12,000. "The Perfect Neighbor," which found an audience on Netflix, got a one-week theatrical run. What's also noteworthy is how political documentaries have swung from an ideological perspective. Over the last few years, the only financially notable entry was "After Death," a 2023 Christian documentary from Angel Studios about near-death survivors that opened to $5 million and “Am I Racist?,” the right-wing Daily Wire-produced documentary that opened with $4.5 million in 2024. As for more recent, left-leaning political documentaries, last year’s Best Oscar winner “No Other Land,” which chronicled the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, grossed $2.5 million from a self-distributed theatrical run after all major distributors passed on releasing it. But as Fuster writes, producers, art house owners and distributors are working to rebuild the theatrical market for these films. Read on for how they're setting up the medium's potential revival. On that brighter note, I hope you all have a great weekend! Roger Cheng 
REBUILDING THE DOCUMENTARY MARKET
It has been a rough couple of years for political documentaries... 
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