Interest in Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos fraud scandal surged after the release of the first teaser for You Can See Everything, the record-breaking A24 documentary about the disgraced former CEO.
The Hulu series The Dropout, which starred Amanda Seyfried as Holmes in 2022, drew 186% more viewers in September than in August, according to Variety. The increase followed the announcement on 6 September of the first teaser for the previously secret documentary.
Viewership rose a further 92% during the week of 12 October compared with the preceding week, as audiences prepared for the film’s 16 October premiere.
John Carreyrou’s 2018 book Bad Blood, which detailed the inner workings of Holmes’s fraudulent empire and the whistleblowers who exposed it, also returned to the New York Times bestseller list.
Holmes was once described as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the United States, with a net worth of $4.5 billion by the age of 30. She left Theranos in 2018 after Carreyrou’s reporting revealed that she and other executives knew the company’s devices could not accurately test blood samples. The company collapsed shortly afterward.
The three-hour A24 production, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, grossed $15 million (A$21.5 million, £11.2 million) in North America from just 855 screens during its opening weekend. It achieved the strongest documentary opening in more than two decades, surpassing Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004, and the best opening for a film playing on fewer than 1,000 screens since Borat earned $26.5 million in 2006. Approximately 2,000 screenings reportedly sold out over the weekend.
The documentary also displaced the video game adaptation Street Fighter, the weekend’s top-grossing film, to second place on Monday’s box-office chart.
Filmed largely in secret in 2023, You Can See Everything entered release one month before Holmes began serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud. The documentary has continued to screen to sold-out audiences, supported by spoiler-conscious word of mouth and widespread critical acclaim. It holds a close-to-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, a record-breaking 99 on Metacritic, and ranks among the highest-rated films on Letterboxd. In a five-star review, The Guardian called it “a stupefying and gloriously destabilizing hall of psychological mirrors, a thrilling once-in-a-lifetime collision of director and subject”.
Commentators believe the film could become the first documentary nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. A24 will also submit it for consideration in cinematography, score, directing, costume design, production design, and makeup and hairstyling, in addition to Best Documentary. Viewers should note that the film’s second half contains major spoilers.
Variety also reported on Tuesday that Amanda Seyfried will be campaigned for Best Supporting Actress.
You Can See Everything is scheduled to expand to at least 2,600 screens for its second domestic weekend, with industry observers watching its box-office trajectory. It opens in Australia on 12 November and in the United Kingdom on 20 November.