Brett Ratner, the director of "Melania," the "documentary" about Melania Trump now in theaters, appears in photos released in the latest batch of documents from the Epstein Files. Billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in jail awaiting trial in 2019. "Melania" is Ratner's first movie since 2017, when he was accused by six women of sexual harassment or misconduct.
In a previous document dump, Ratner was shown hugging Jean-Luc Brunel, one of Epstein's associates, accused of supplying girls to the late sex trafficker and others. This photo was included in the 15 thumbnails depicting Ratner released by the DOJ as part of more than 3 million Epstein files released on Friday.
The photos show Ratner and Epstein with notorious pimp and pedophile Jean-Luc Brunel, who hanged himself in 2020, and several young people whose faces are redacted.
Melania, bought by Amazon for $40m in what many describe plainly as a bribe to the Trumps (Melania herself reportedly pockets $28m), burned through another $35m in marketing costs. But it's not doing brisk business at the box office: it made $2.9m in previews and its first day on general release. That puts it on target for a $6-7m weekend. The best that can be said about it (reviews are scathing) is that this is good for a "documentary," even if no documentary has ever had even a fraction of Melania's marketing budget. If we assume it makes $20m domestically, all told, it will be both the biggest ever theatrical box office for a documentary and the biggest ever financial loss for a documentary.
