A nearly three-hour documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has pulled off one of the most surprising box office feats of the year. "You Can See Everything," co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and distributed by A24, earned an estimated $15 million in its opening weekend from just 855 theaters — the second-biggest opening ever for a non-music documentary in North America.
A historic opening for a three-hour documentary
The film finished No. 2 at the weekend box office behind only the video game adaptation "Street Fighter," which took an estimated $30–$31 million from 3,575 screens. "You Can See Everything" played on fewer than 1,000 screens yet logged roughly 2,000 sellout screenings, with a per-theater average of about $17,500. The figures came from Sunday estimates and may shift once final numbers are counted.
According to Deadline, the only non-music documentary to ever open bigger was Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which debuted with $23.9 million in 2004. It was also the biggest opening for any film playing in fewer than 1,000 theaters since "Borat" opened to $26.5 million in 2006. A24, which reportedly spent less than $7 million producing the film in secret over three years and under $10 million marketing it, had been tracking toward a $7–$8 million weekend — the film roughly doubled its target.
The opening also dwarfed other recent nonfiction releases: the "Melania" documentary about the first lady opened to about $7 million, Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning" managed roughly $5 million, and Alex Gibney's four-hour "Musk" documentary earned just over $300,000 on the same weekend.
How Fielder got unprecedented access to Holmes
The project began 34 days before Holmes was due to report to federal prison in May 2023, when the Theranos founder invited a skeptical film crew to document her life at a beachfront home with her partner Billy Evans and their two young children. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in federal prison after being convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud Theranos investors, who had poured money into a blood-testing company whose signature technology — running hundreds of tests from a few drops of blood — investigators found did not work. USA Today reports Holmes is scheduled for release in 2030.
Fielder, the absurdist comedian behind "Nathan for You" and "The Rehearsal," appears on camera interviewing Holmes and Evans, and critics describe the result less as a conventional true-crime retelling than a surreal, metatextual odyssey as Fielder presses Holmes on whether she believes she did anything wrong. The official trailer was released on September 23.
Critics, audiences, and what comes next
Reviews have been near-unanimous: the film holds 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 99 on Metacritic, and a record-high 4.8 rating on Letterboxd, with some critics already predicting a Best Picture nomination. PostTrak exit polls found 91% of audiences gave it a "definite recommend," and over 70% of the opening-weekend crowd was under 35. "Everybody underestimated the movie," Rentrak's Paul Dergarabedian told Fast Company. "Fielder is a huge draw, and he has a huge following on social media, and then Elizabeth Holmes is just a character that you couldn't even make up."
"You Can See Everything" expands nationally next weekend, with A24 calling it one of the largest limited-release openings of the 21st century. Whether it can chase down "Fahrenheit 9/11" as the highest-grossing documentary ever will depend on how long the curiosity holds — but for now, a three-hour film about a corporate fraud case has rewritten the rules of what documentaries can do at the box office.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Life of Riley (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources
- CNN: 'You Can See Everything' becomes one of the biggest documentary releases in decades
- TechCrunch: Everyone's watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary 'You Can See Everything'
- Fast Company: Elizabeth Holmes documentary creates huge buzz on first weekend
- USA Today: Elizabeth Holmes doc 'You Can See Everything' stuns at box office