Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything stunned the box office this weekend, opening to $15 million domestically, double industry expectations, good enough for second place behind Street Fighter. Per Variety’s figures, it is the largest opening for a non-music or concert documentary since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. Here is how a three-hour nonfiction film became an opening-weekend event, what the movie actually is, and where you can see it.
How much did You Can See Everything make at the box office?
The A24 release earned $15 million in its opening weekend in North America, landing at No. 2 behind Paramount’s Street Fighter, which took $31 million domestic and $51.1 million worldwide in its own debut. Tracking had the documentary at roughly half its final figure, and as Entertainment Weekly notes, specialty releases from boutique studios rarely crack the top three, and documentaries are almost never easy theatrical sells. The Verge reports it is the biggest opening for a non-music documentary in more than 20 years.
What is You Can See Everything about?
The film is a meta documentary about convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, directed by Nathan Fielder, the comic precisionist behind Nathan for You, The Rehearsal and The Curse, working with filmmaker Lance Oppenheim. It runs roughly three hours and, in Fielder’s fashion, blurs the line between investigation and constructed reality: less a straight retelling of the Theranos saga than an examination of how Holmes performs, and how we watch her perform. A24 released it as a specialty title that played far beyond specialty numbers.
Why did a documentary open this big?
Three forces stacked up. First, Fielder’s audience: The Rehearsal turned him into one of the few nonfiction names who can open a project on curiosity alone. Second, the subject: Holmes remains one of the most searched figures in American business culture, and the appetite for Theranos material has never really cooled since her fraud trial made her a fixture of true-crime coverage. Third, word of mouth: EW reports strong buzz heading into release, and A24’s marketing leaned into the film’s oddness rather than sanding it down. Put together, a three-hour documentary played like an event film.
The rest of the weekend box office
Street Fighter’s $31 million opening was the headline the studios expected, powered by Noah Centineo, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Jason Momoa. The casualty of the weekend was Other Mommy, the Jessica Chastain horror film directed by Rob Savage, which fell 70 percent in its second weekend after opening at No. 1, per EW’s chart report. For the full Street Fighter numbers, read our Street Fighter box office report on its $51 million global opening.
What this means for readers and moviegoers
If you want to see it this week: it is playing in theaters, and at three hours it is a commitment, so check showtimes and pick an evening slot with room around it. If you are waiting for streaming, no date has been announced yet; A24 releases typically land on digital platforms a few weeks after theatrical, but the studio has not confirmed one for this title. Our guide to where to watch You Can See Everything tracks the streaming status and will be updated when a date lands.
Our analysis: the event-ization of the documentary
This opening is not an accident, it is a strategy working. A24 has spent years turning nonfiction into appointment viewing by treating docs like horror movies: mystery-first marketing, filmmaker-as-brand, and zero plot summary in the trailers. Pair that with Fielder, whose entire career is about the gap between performance and reality, taking on Holmes, perhaps the most studied performer in modern business, and you get a subject-director match that sells itself to exactly the audience that buys opening-weekend tickets. The larger signal for the industry: in a year when mid-budget originals have struggled, a three-hour documentary doubling expectations suggests theatrical audiences will still show up for anything that feels like a one-time cultural event. Expect more studios to test “event docs” in 2027 slates.
