A Three-Hour Elizabeth Holmes Film Sold Out Like It Was Borat

Eight years after Theranos collapsed, and four after Amanda Seyfried played the story on Hulu, A24 found out there was still a line. You Can See Everything, a three-hour documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, opened at $15 million from 855 theaters. That is about $17,500 a screen. Deadline says it is the biggest opening for a title under 1,000 engagements since Borat did $26.4 million on 837 screens in 2006.

The subject is Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans in the run-up to her federal prison term. A24 hid a premiere at Telluride and then kept the release tight on purpose, with a wider break planned for next weekend. There is no CinemaScore, because the run is under 1,000 screens. There is a PostTrak number instead: 98 percent positive, 91 percent definite recommend, the kind of score Deadline compared with old Marvel openings. A24 says 70 percent of the audience was under 35. Forty-one percent bought the ticket the day they went. More than 2,000 shows sold out. In Los Angeles the chorus was that you could not get a seat. In San Francisco the AMC Kabuki had tech people buying out auditoriums.

Letterboxd’s 4.8, Deadline reports, is the highest score the platform has recorded. The chatter RelishMix pulled is less about the blood tests and more about the cut: people saying a documentary can be lit and scored like a horror film. One line keeps getting passed around, that a person who wants everyone to believe he is fake finally met a person who wants everyone to believe she is genuine. Fielder has spent a career on that first half. Holmes supplied the second. The second-best documentary opening anyone can find, once you set concert films aside, is still Fahrenheit 9/11 at $23.9 million in 2004. Fifteen million on a secret rollout is how you get compared with it.