You Can See Everything documentary stuns with huge box office debut

A three-hour documentary on the tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes has raked in a whopping $15 million (£11.25m) on its box office debut, despite a limited run at 855 screens across the US and Canada.

The eagerly anticipated A24 film, titled You Can See Everything, was co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.

It finds Holmes at her home in 2023 during the month before she began an 11-year prison sentence.

US publication Deadline has described it as “easily the second best opening ever for a documentary at the box office after 2004s Fahrenheit 9/11”, Michael Moore’s movie about the US’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ticket sales at the box office were enough for second place behind Paramount’s new video game adaptation, Street Fighter, which opened to $31 million in North America and $51.1 million globally.

You Can See Everything also secured the largest debut for any film playing on under 1,000 screens since 2006’s Borat, which scored $26 million.

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors in her medical testing company Theranos, fuelling a media circus that has been chronicled in books, podcasts and the mini-series The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried.

In You Can See Everything, comedian Fielder – known for shows including The Rehearsal and The Curse – places himself inside the action, once again blurring the lines between documentary, social experiment and prank show.

We see notorious Silicon Valley founder Holmes invite a sceptical film crew to document her every move, thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison.

The first teaser trailer dropped last month, right after the film’s surprise premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

It went viral and launched many online memes of Holmes unblinkingly asking Fielder: “Why would I deceive you?”