A 3-Hour Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Opened to $15 Million on 855 Screens. The Record Claims Don't Agree.

Lines ran around the block this weekend at the Village East in New York and the Belcourt in Nashville, Deadline reported, for a three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. The film, You Can See Everything, from directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, took an estimated $15 million from 855 theaters, about $17,500 a theater. It finished second to Street Fighter, which made $31 million from more than 3,500.

Those are Sunday estimates, and final numbers post Monday. A24 said more than 2,000 screenings sold out. Fortune reported that Variety had projected $7 million to $8 million, so the weekend landed at roughly double the forecast.

A story already told four times

By the time Fielder and Oppenheim started, the Holmes saga had been a podcast, a best-selling book, an Alex Gibney documentary and a Hulu series, The Dropout, according to IndieWire. Fielder worried the story had been told too many times already, Oppenheim told the outlet. A deal for her story had fallen apart, and she had only weeks before she reported to a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.

So Fielder asked A24 for money, to be left alone, and a provision "that we could just kill it at any time," Oppenheim recalled. A24 agreed. By the time the two reached the Del Mar, California, beach cottage where Holmes and her partner Billy Evans were living with their two small children, 34 days remained. Oppenheim said the kill switch removed the pressure to produce anything: "You can essentially fish." Seven people went into the house.

Which record is it

The ranking depends on who is counting. Deadline calls the debut easily the second-best opening ever for a documentary, behind Fahrenheit 9/11's $23.9 million in 2004. Fortune uses the same framing. TheWrap's headline says it is the largest documentary opening in 13 years, which points to One Direction: This Is Us in 2013.

TheWrap's own story puts that film's opening at $15.8 million from 2,735 screens, higher than $15 million. So its headline and its numbers do not line up, and Deadline and Fortune do not say how they handle concert films such as Michael Jackson's This Is It. I could not reach an independent box office database to settle it. What all three agree on is that Fahrenheit 9/11, which opened on 868 screens, is still ahead.

Deadline offered a different comparison. Borat opened to $26.4 million on 837 theaters in 2006, a $31,600 average. Deadline says You Can See Everything is the best opening on fewer than 1,000 screens since Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert took $31.1 million in 2008.

What documentaries usually do

TheWrap's preview piece notes that recent documentary hits have mostly been music films, such as Becoming Led Zeppelin and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Political and social documentaries have struggled, and it cites The Social Reckoning as a recent flop. The prior non-music record since COVID, Melania, opened to $7.1 million on 1,778 screens.

The audience numbers are strong. TheWrap reported that 92 percent of PostTrak respondents gave the film a definite recommend, against 81 percent for The Odyssey, and that Rotten Tomatoes shows 99 percent from critics and 98 percent from audiences. TheWrap also said a surprise Telluride premiere and a viral teaser built buzz among cinephiles before release.

What the weekend does not show

Sellouts at 855 screens in cities with art-house crowds measure demand against limited seats. Nothing in the reporting says why general audiences came for a three-hour film, and A24 has not said whether it will add screens. TheWrap's preview said that as of last week the studio had not. Budget reports also vary: TheWrap's coverage has given figures under $10 million and under $20 million for production and marketing combined.

The test is the second weekend. If the per-theater average holds as the film expands, a documentary will have done something the recent Holmes projects did not: draw people to a theater for a story they thought they already knew.