Donald and Melania Trump were walking a charcoal-coloured carpet beneath a stark black-and-white “MELANIA” backdrop. “Do you believe you’d be the man you are today if you hadn’t met your wife?” a reporter asked the US president.

Trump smiled and said: “He’s asking me a very dangerous question!” He went on to praise his wife without answering. When the reporter put the same question to Melania, she ventured: “Well, we will all be in different places, I guess.” With a nervous laugh, she turned to look at Trump and asked, “Right?”

The couple were attending Thursday night’s premiere of Melania, a big-budget documentary billed as an “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look” at the first lady’s return to the White House – but dismissed by critics as a $75m vanity project and likely box office flop.

The film, which chronicles the 20 days leading up to the inauguration in January 2025, was shown at Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which the president’s acolytes have tried to rename the Trump-Kennedy Center in a legally dubious move.

Financed by Amazon MGM Studios, the documentary has been marketed with the gusto of a Hollywood blockbuster rather than a discreet political portrait. TV adverts ran during NFL playoff games; billboards appeared across US cities; and a promotional video was projected on the exterior of Las Vegas’s Sphere. This week adverts were even spotted in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Amazon paid a record $40m to license the film and a related docuseries for its Prime Video platform, with a further $35m spent on promotion and distribution, according to people familiar with the deal. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melania Trump will personally make $28m.

The scale of the spend has raised eyebrows, not least because Amazon’s founder and chair, Jeff Bezos, also contributed to Trump’s inaugural fund last year. Amazon and the film’s director, Brett Ratner, have rejected suggestions that the project was designed to curry favour with the administration.

Ratner – for whom this is the first film since 2017, when six women accused him of sexual misconduct, allegations that he denies – told reporters at the premiere: “It wasn’t about getting rich. I think the Trumps are wealthy and successful enough.”

The documentary opened on roughly 1,700 screens in the US and Canada on Friday, with releases in about 25 territories beyond North America. Box office analysts suggest an opening weekend of up to $5m.

The film promises rare access to one of Washington’s most elusive figures. The Slovenian-born Melania Trump, 55, has kept a low profile during her husband’s second term and has long stressed a desire for privacy.

The official trailer opens on inauguration day, showing her in a navy wide-brimmed hat at the US Capitol, before cutting to scenes in which she advises the president on his inaugural address, urging him to strike the tone of a “peacemaker and unifier”. At one moment she looks straight into the camera and remarks drily: “Here we go again.”

Melania told journalists on Thursday: “I want to show the audience my life – what it takes to be a first lady again. It’s beautiful, it’s emotional, it’s fashionable, it’s cinematic and I’m very proud of it.”

Some observers are intrigued by the prospect. Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to the former first lady Laura Bush, asked: “Why not? In her first term there was such hostility towards her and everything that she tried to do, so this is an opportunity for her in the second term where she has come back confident, knowledgable, defining herself and her role in the way that she wants to and not to be defined by others’ expectations of her.”

But few in the film industry are expecting a masterpiece. The British documentary maker James Fletcher, who made The Accidental President about how and why Trump won the 2016 election, said: “I wouldn’t go to cinema to watch it. Melania is conspicuous by her absence. She’s not like Michelle Obama, who was pretty present. Obviously Hillary Clinton was, and we all remember Nancy Reagan and ‘Just say no’.

“It strikes me it’s quite hard to make a documentary about someone who’s not in evidence. But I may be totally wrong and there could be a brilliant angle or some scoop in there that is going to shut us all up.”

Historians have observed that the film is unprecedented for a sitting first lady. Presidents and their spouses have traditionally avoided commercial ventures while in office to prevent conflicts of interest.

Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama both waited until their White House years were behind them before publishing memoirs. Obama’s Becoming went on to become the fastest-selling memoir of all time. Jill Biden, by contrast, continued teaching English at a local community college. Her salary for 2023 was $85,985, according to the Bidens’ tax returns.

Kurt Bardella, a political commentator and former congressional aide, said: “I can only imagine what Republicans would have said had first lady Hillary Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama, first lady Jill Biden been paid somewhere between $30m and $40m by a Hollywood studio to allow a documentary.

“The one consistent thing that we have seen during Trump 2 is the ‘open for business’ sign that’s been tattooed on the White House and the first family availing themselves of profiting from the presidency.” The Trumps have continued to market everything from watches and fragrances to jewellery, ornaments and digital collectibles.

Mary Jordan, author of The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, said the first lady’s three motivations for making the film were “money, money and money”.

Another incentive, Jordan added, is editorial control. “It has always bothered her when people wrote about her. She has said several times, ‘Only I know my truth, only I know my story.’ She’s never quite adapted to the fact that if you are the best-known woman in the world, people will write about you. This was her chance to tell a bit of her story herself. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to suddenly have a pulling back of the curtain about who Melania is.”

Melania Trump has been closely involved in the film’s development for more than a year, according to her advisers. It also highlights her policy interests, including child welfare initiatives, online safety legislation, foster-care reform, and a role in the administration’s work on artificial intelligence and education.

Like her husband’s, Melania Trump’s second term is proving quite different from her first. Jordan commented: “In the first term, people were always wondering if she was this damsel in distress – blink your eyes if you need a rescue – that somehow she was there captive. You don’t have any of that this time.

“She is making it very clear that she’s independent and that is something she’s always wanted. She has her own projects. She exudes more confidence now and she certainly has more of her own money too.”