An Amazon MGM Studios representative told NBC News that Amazon Prime Video has acquired a license for a documentary about Melania Trump, the incoming first lady, that will air later this year.
The spokeswoman claimed in a statement that the documentary’s filming started last month. Melania Trump and Fernando Sulichin are listed as executive producers on the project. The film will be directed by Brett Ratner, who is also a co-owner of RatPac Entertainment, formerly connected to former Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
The Amazon representative continued, “We are thrilled to share this genuinely unique story with our millions of customers worldwide.”
Only two weeks before the pair is scheduled to return to the White House for a second term, and months after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November, the announcement was made.
In recent weeks, the connection between Trump and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has come under investigation because of what is thought to be a new friendliness between the two men.
Bezos is remains the executive chairman of Amazon, having resigned as CEO in 2021. In addition, the billionaire controls Blue Origin, an aerospace firm, and The Washington Post newspaper.
There were several high-profile conflicts between Bezos or his businesses and the then-president during Trump’s first term.
For instance, Amazon claimed in a 2019 lawsuit that Trump attacked the corporation behind its back. The business asserted that it lost out on a significant cloud services contract for Amazon Web Services as a result of the then-president’s public and private attacks.
The Post’s cartoonist Ann Telnaes revealed last week that she resigned from her position after being prevented from releasing a satirical cartoon about tech CEOs, including Bezos, kneeling in front of the president-elect.
According to Telnaes, the other CEOs included in the cartoon were Patrick Soon-Shiong, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Bezos, Altman, Zuckerberg, and others have all promised to contribute $1 million to the inaugural committee of the president-elect.
David Shipley, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post, refuted the claim that Bezos was the reason behind the cancellation of the Telnaes cartoon.
“My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column, this one a satire, for publication,” Shipley said in a statement to CNBC. Repetition was the only thing that was biased.
Telnaes’ disclosure followed months of criticism from Post readers and both current and former employees over the publication’s announcement that it would no longer support presidential candidates.
Journalists at the Post reported that the editorial board of the publication has chosen to support Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Bezos personally decided to cease supporting campaigns, according to the same article.
Presidential endorsements don’t change the outcome of an election, Bezos wrote in a piece that was posted on the newspaper’s website a few days later. In Pennsylvania, no undecided voter will declare, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” Not at all. The real effect of presidential endorsements is to give the impression that they are biased. a sense of not being independent. It’s the right thing to do, and ending them is a principled choice.
When NBC News asked Bezos if he had any involvement in obtaining the licensing for the upcoming Melania Trump documentary, he did not immediately reply.
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