Nathan Fielder's You Can See Everything Heads for One of the Best Documentary Openings in Years

A three-hour documentary about a convicted Silicon Valley founder is not the kind of film that usually challenges a video game blockbuster for attention. This weekend, that is exactly what is happening at the North American box office.

You Can See Everything, the A24 documentary co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, opened in theaters on Friday, October 16, 2026. According to Deadline's Friday box office update, it is on course for an opening of around $12 million from roughly 885 theaters.

The Numbers Behind the Surprise

Deadline reports that the film took $5.3 million on Friday, including previews, after earning $1.75 million from its Thursday preview shows. For a documentary playing in fewer than 900 locations, that is a remarkable start.

Deadline's box office editor Anthony D'Alessandro wrote that the projected result would be the second best opening for a documentary in the past 17 years, not counting concert films. It would also outpace the previous best documentary opening of the decade, which Deadline puts at $7.1 million.

Forecasters had been cautious. Deadline noted that conservative estimates going into the weekend had the film in the high single digits. The Numbers, in its Friday morning model, went further and placed it second for the weekend with a possible $14.3 million.

Who Is Turning Up

The audience is young. Deadline reports that 75 percent of Thursday night ticket buyers in Los Angeles and New York were under 35, and the crowd split evenly between men and women.

Word of mouth looks strong too. Deadline cites a 99 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score, a 92 percent definite recommend figure in exit polling, and a 4.7 rating on Letterboxd.

The economics are modest by studio standards. According to Deadline, the film was shot over four years and cost less than $10 million to make, with a marketing budget that was also under $10 million.

What the Film Is About

A24 describes the premise simply. Thirty-four days before she was due to go to prison, Elizabeth Holmes invited a skeptical film crew to document her every move, and what began as an intimate portrait became a three-year journey.

The Hollywood Reporter explains that the nearly three-hour film splits into two halves. The first follows Holmes at the beachside San Diego area rental where she lived with her partner Billy Evans and their two young children in the weeks before she reported to a Texas federal prison. The second picks up again two years into her incarceration.

Holmes is serving an 11-year sentence after being convicted of defrauding investors in Theranos, as Variety notes in its review. The blood-testing start-up had promised compact devices that could run tests on a single drop of blood.

A Festival Secret That Became a Hit

The film first appeared as an unannounced mystery screening at the Telluride Film Festival in September. Variety's Owen Gleiberman described the buzz around that screening as matching any of the major titles in the lineup.

It then played the New York Film Festival, where The Guardian reported that access to the premiere became one of the hottest tickets of the fall. Its review called the film a modern masterpiece of deceit, while The Hollywood Reporter's verdict was "Smart, funny and full of surprises."

Fielder is best known for his HBO series The Rehearsal. Oppenheim directed this fall's Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson, which Deadline reports opened to $18.8 million. Together they have made the rare documentary that people are talking about outside the festival circuit.

The Rest of the Weekend

At the top of the chart, Paramount and Legendary's Street Fighter, directed by Kitao Sakurai, is heading for a $30 million opening after a $12.5 million Friday at 3,575 theaters, according to Deadline. That puts it comfortably in first place.

Further down, Deadline projects around $7.4 million for the second weekend of Universal's Other Mommy, roughly $6 million to $7 million for 20th Century Studios' Whalefall, and about $6 million for Focus Features' Sense and Sensibility. Final weekend figures will arrive on Sunday, with actuals on Monday.

For now, the story of the weekend may be the smallest release in the top tier. Have you seen You Can See Everything yet, or are you waiting for it to reach streaming? Keep following Hollywood Magazine for the final weekend numbers and more box office coverage.

Sources: Deadline (Anthony D'Alessandro, October 16, 2026), The Numbers (October 16, 2026), A24, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, The Guardian.