Interest in Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos fraud scandal has increased amid buzz around You Can See Everything, the record-breaking documentary about the disgraced former CEO.
Viewership for The Dropout, the 2022 Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, jumped 186% in September from the previous month, according to Variety, after the first teaser for the previously secret film was announced on September 6.
Viewership nearly doubled again during the week of October 12, increasing 92% from the previous week in the days leading up to the film’s October 16 premiere.
Additionally, Bad Blood, journalist John Carreyrou’s 2018 book detailing the inner workings of Holmes’ fraudulent empire and the whistleblowers who exposed her, returned to the New York Times bestseller list.
Holmes, at one point the youngest self-made female billionaire in the United States with a net worth of $4.5 billion at age 30, left the company in 2018, after Carreyrou’s reporting revealed that she and others knew that Theranos devices could not accurately test blood samples. The company collapsed soon after.
The three-hour film, produced by A24 and directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, enjoyed an extraordinary $15 million (A$21.5 million, £11.2 million) in North America on just 855 screens – the best opening weekend for a documentary in more than two decades, since 9/11 Fahrenheit, in 2004, as well as the best opening for a film released on less than of 1,000 screens since the release of Borat. $26.5 million, in 2006. There were reportedly 2,000 sold-out screenings over the weekend.
The film also propelled the weekend’s champion, the video game adaptation Street Fighter, to second place in Monday’s box office rankings.
Filmed largely in secret in 2023, the month before Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud, You Can See Everything was released to sold-out audiences thanks to spoiler-averse word of mouth and near-unanimous rave reviews. It holds a rare, near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and is universally acclaimed with a 97 on Metacritic and is one of the highest-rated films of all time on Letterboxd. In a five-star review, the Guardian called it “a stunning and gloriously unsettling hall of psychological mirrors, a thrilling and unique collision between director and subject.”
Experts also predict that the film could become the first documentary ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Additionally, due to the film’s meandering second half – minor spoilers ahead – A24 will submit You Can See Everything for consideration for cinematography, music, director, costume design, production design, and makeup and hairstyling in addition to Best Documentary.
Variety also confirmed Tuesday that Amanda Seyfried will campaign for the Best Supporting Actress award.
You Can See Everything will span at least 2,600 screens in its second domestic weekend, with many industry eyes on its rise at the box office. It will premiere in Australia on November 12 and in the UK on November 20.
Gn entert
