The documentary about the first lady once held the genre’s biggest opening in more than a decade, and a film shot in secret about a convicted fraudster has now passed its entire domestic haul in just four days.
A24’s “You Can See Everything,” the Elizabeth Holmes documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, took in $15.6 million over the weekend of Oct. 16-18, playing in just 855 theaters in the U.S. and Canada — more than double the opening of “Melania.”
The figure landed at roughly double the $7 million to $8 million Variety had projected heading into the weekend. A24 counted more than 2,000 sold-out screenings for a film that runs nearly three hours.
Only “Street Fighter” Outsold It
Paramount’s “Street Fighter,” the video game adaptation, was the one title that beat it, with $30 million to $31 million in Sunday estimates from 3,575 venues. That worked out to a per-location average of $8,671, against more than $18,000 for the Holmes film. The Holmes film then won Monday’s box office outright with $2.57 million, pushing its North American total to $18.1 million, Deadline reported.
“Street Fighter” added $20.1 million overseas for a global opening of $51.1 million. The film carries an $82 million production cost co-financed by Legendary and Capcom, with Paramount handling distribution only.
The weekend gave “You Can See Everything” the biggest opening for a non-music documentary since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which debuted with $23.9 million on 868 screens in 2004 on its way to a genre-record $119.2 million domestic total. The Holmes film also posted the largest debut for any movie on fewer than 1,000 screens since “Borat” made about $26 million in 837 theaters in 2006. Neither comparison accounts for inflation.
David A. Gross, publisher of box office newsletter FranchiseRe, told Variety, “This is a giant weekend for the genre.” Documentaries rarely receive a wide release, Gross said, and typically take in $3 million over their first three days.
Made in Secret for Under $7 Million
Brett Ratner directed “Melania,” the Amazon MGM documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, and in late January 2026 the film drew $7.1 million from 1,778 locations. That start counted as a success by documentary standards, and at the time it was the biggest for a non-music documentary in more than a decade. It played on twice as many screens as the Holmes film and finished its domestic run with $16.3 million, a total “You Can See Everything” passed in four days.
The two films did not cost the same. Fielder and Oppenheim shot theirs quietly across three years for under $7 million. Marketing was reported at less than $10 million, and the combined production-and-marketing figure put under $20 million. Amazon MGM reportedly paid $40 million for the rights and spent about $35 million on marketing. Reviewers divided just as sharply. The Holmes film holds a 99 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 99 on Metacritic, while “Melania” sits at 9 percent.
She Tried to Convince Them
The film made a surprise world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on Sept. 6. The Theranos founder is tracked across the 34 days leading up to her federal prison sentence of more than 11 years for defrauding investors. Fielder spent over a month with Holmes, her partner Billy Evans and her two young children before she reported to prison in 2023, and the director appears on camera interviewing the couple.
Her innocence was something Holmes tried to convince the filmmakers of. Other threads take up what she and Evans have built together, how she came to MAGA politics, and what she made of Amanda Seyfried playing her in Hulu’s “The Dropout.” Oppenheim’s A24 feature “Primetime” has earned nearly $50 million against a $15 million budget.
Top of the Letterboxd Rankings
More than 70 percent of the opening weekend crowd was under 35. Exit polls found 91 percent of ticket buyers would definitely recommend the film, and it is the highest-rated film on Letterboxd. Awards watchers are asking whether the documentary could pick up a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, which no documentary has ever done before.
Rentrak’s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian, said, “Elizabeth Holmes is just a character that you couldn’t even make up.” Some moviegoers might otherwise have balked at a three-hour documentary, he added, but Fielder’s huge social media following drew them in.
Theaters nationwide sold about $101.6 million in tickets over the weekend, a figure up 45 percent from the same weekend a year earlier. Rentrak figures put the year-to-date domestic total at $8.2 billion, up almost 20 percent from 2025. “You Can See Everything” expands nationwide in the coming weeks.
