A documentary about a convicted fraudster, made in secret on a fraction of the budget, has blown past the entire domestic run of First Lady Melania Trump’s film in a matter of days.
Directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim saw their Elizabeth Holmes documentary, “You Can See Everything,” take in $15.6 million over the weekend of Oct. 16-18, 2026. That was more than double the opening of “Melania,” a film that played on twice as many screens. A24 released the nearly three-hour movie in just 855 theaters across the U.S. and Canada.
The distributor reported a per-location average of more than $18,000 and more than 2,000 sold-out screenings. Only one title finished ahead of it for the weekend: Paramount’s “Street Fighter,” which took $30 million to $31 million in Sunday estimates from 3,575 venues, averaging $8,671 a location.
The opening ranks as the second-biggest documentary debut on record. Only filmmaker Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” stands ahead of it, with a $23.9 million debut on 868 screens in 2004 and a genre-record $119.2 million domestic finish. The Holmes film also posted the largest debut for any movie playing on fewer than 1,000 screens since “Borat,” which took about $26 million from 837 theaters in 2006. Neither comparison is adjusted for inflation.
Giant Weekend for the Genre
Documentaries rarely receive a wide release, and a typical first-three-days take runs about $3 million, David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe, told Variety. “This is a giant weekend for the genre,” he said.
What $27 Million Could Not Buy
Director Brett Ratner drew $7.1 million for “Melania,” made for Amazon MGM, when it opened across 1,778 locations in late January 2026 — at the time the biggest start for a non-music documentary in more than a decade, and a success by the standards of the genre. The film finished its domestic run at about $16 million. The Holmes documentary came within about $700,000 of that total in three days.
It cleared the mark on Monday, Oct. 19, adding $2.57 million for a running total of about $18.1 million, past the entire “Melania” haul.
The money behind each film tilts the comparison further. The two directors worked in secret over three years for roughly $7 million, with marketing reported at less than $10 million and a combined production-and-marketing figure put under $20 million. One accounting puts the cost of producing and marketing “Melania” at $27 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. “Melania” sits at 9 percent.
Fielder’s Month With Elizabeth Holmes
The film made a surprise world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on Sept. 6. The Theranos founder is tracked through the 34 days before she began a federal prison sentence of more than 11 years for defrauding investors. Holmes, her partner Billy Evans and her two young children hosted Fielder for over a month before she reported to prison in 2023, and he appears on camera interviewing the couple.
The filmmakers were the audience for Holmes’ attempts to argue her innocence. Her relationship with Evans, her MAGA evolution and her reaction to being portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in Hulu’s “The Dropout” are all taken up by the documentary as well. Oppenheim’s A24 feature “Primetime” has earned nearly $50 million against a $15 million budget.
Awards Watchers Eye a First
More than 70 percent of the opening weekend crowd was under 35. In exit polls, 90 percent of ticket buyers said they would definitely recommend the film and 80 percent rated it above what they had anticipated. Letterboxd users have given it a 4.8 average, a figure no other title on the platform has matched. Awards watchers are now debating whether it could become the first documentary ever nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Fielder’s huge social media following drew in moviegoers who might otherwise have balked at a three-hour documentary, according to Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for Rentrak. “Elizabeth Holmes is just a character that you couldn’t even make up,” he said.
Theaters nationwide collected about $101.6 million over the Oct. 16-18 weekend, up 45 percent from the same weekend a year earlier.
The film topped the daily box office from Monday, Oct. 19, through Thursday, Oct. 22, and expanded from 855 theaters to 2,655 on Friday, Oct. 23. Its second weekend, Oct. 23-25, brought in an estimated $19.5 million, up 25 percent from its opening, placing it second behind “Clayface” and lifting its domestic total past $45 million.