Melania Trump’s senior adviser Marc Beckman couldn’t resist picking a fight with Tom Cruise this week after the Hollywood star’s latest movie bombed at the box office.

The satirical black comedy Digger made US$8 million ($A11.5 million) in its box office debut in the US, making it one of Cruise’s worst box office openings.

Digger is now on track to be one of the biggest studio bombs in history, given its budget was more than $160 million.

Rather than commiserating with Cruise, Beckman decided to point out that the US first lady’s own bomb – her self-titled documentary Melania – performed better than Digger.

“On a per-theatre basis, Melania outperformed Tom Cruise’s Digger by approximately 67 per cent, despite opening in roughly half as many theatres,” Beckman posted.

“Digger played in 1543 more theatres than Melania.”

“Melania delivered extraordinary theatrical drawing power, rivalling some of Hollywood’s most recognisable stars,” Beckman claimed in a follow-up post.

“Opening in just 1778 theatres, the documentary generated $7.16 million in its opening weekend and $11 million in its first seven days. Even more impressive was its efficiency.”

“Melania generated $4027 per theatre during opening weekend —more than three times the per-theatre performance of Julia Roberts’ recent wide release and approaching Leonardo DiCaprio’s, despite operating with less than half the theatrical footprint of a conventional Hollywood wide release,” he also claimed.

Panned by critics, Melania finished its box office run with US$16.6 million worldwide (US$16.3 million of which came from domestic earnings). That’s a strong haul for a documentary but a financial bomb theatrically considering Amazon paid US$40 million to acquire the documentary and spent a further US$35 million on marketing.

Beckman’s posts has been variously criticised by X users as “some lame-ass number crunching” and as dangerous flex.

“Next, we’ll see Spirit Airlines bragging they have a better on-time record than the Titanic,” one said.

Meanwhile, Cruise is yet to respond.

Shortly before Digger‘s disastrous opening weekend, Cruise claimed he does not make movies thinking about their box office debuts.

“When I am making [movies], I’m not going, ‘opening weekend!’. I feel very much like we’re going to make something that is a lasting piece of cinema,” Cruise said on the On Film With Kevin McCarthy podcast.