Nathan Fielder’s nearly three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything, has opened to an extraordinary $15m domestic box office, the biggest opening weekend for a documentary in North America in more than 20 years.

You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, made $15m (A$21.5m, £11.2m) from only 855 screens, and had more than 2,000 sold-out screenings at the weekend, according to the production company A24. It is the biggest opening for a film playing on fewer than 1,000 screens since Borat opened to $26.5m in 2006.

It is also the biggest opening for a documentary in North America in two decades, since Fahrenheit 9/11 made nearly $24m from 868 theaters. Those numbers do not account for inflation or for concert films: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour holds the record with a $92.8m opening weekend in 2023 when it was released in nearly 4,000 cinemas.

You Can See Everything has not opened at the international box office yet, coming out in Australia on 12 November and in the UK on 20 November.

Like other hits this year, including Backrooms and Obsession, ticket sales for You Can See Everything were driven by a largely younger audience in North America; more than 70% of the opening weekend crowd were under 35.

The film, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, was made in secret over three years. Fielder spent more than a month with the disgraced Theranos founder and her family, including her two young children and her partner, Billy Evans, in her final days before reporting to federal prison.

The reviews have been extremely positive, with 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and 99 on Metacritic. It also won an unprecedented 91% “definite recommend” from audiences, according to PostTrak exit polls.

You Can See Everything reportedly cost less than $7m to make and less than $10m to market.

“Everybody underestimated the movie, because on paper this is like, wait, a three-hour documentary?” said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Rentrak, told Associated Press. “But [Fielder] is a huge draw, and he has a huge following on social media, and then Elizabeth Holmes is just a character that you couldn’t even make up. It’s stranger than fiction, and that’s really compelling.”

Elsewhere in the box office, Street Fighter topped the charts as expected with a $51m global opening, including $20m from international showings. The movie starring Callina Liang, Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji cost a reported $82m to make, not accounting for marketing and promotion. Audiences were 69% male.

Both Street Fighter and You Can See Everything may have contributed to Whalefall’s relative failure at the weekend. The $60m survival thriller starring Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin made $8m from 3,065 locations in the US and Canada, despite being better reviewed than Street Fighter. With $9.5m from international showings, the Disney release had a total $17.5m global launch.

Whalefall opened in fourth place, behind the Jessica Chastain horror Other Mommy, which took $8.4m domestically in its second weekend, adding to its $78.7m global total.

Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary Musk also expanded to 472 screens in the US and Canada, making $306,702. The film, which runs for nearly four hours, has faced problems advertising on major social media platforms including X, which Musk owns, and TikTok, according to its distributor, Bleecker Street, which said that at the weekend TikTok had permanently suspended the film’s ad account.

Netflix also shared ticket sales for the first time for the queer Spanish epic La Bola Negra, which made $277,500 from four locations at the weekend. The streamer has not historically reported box office for its theatrical releases but this film is breaking new ground as it is being positioned as a possible best picture contender. It will be in theatres for 47 days before it will be available to watch on Netflix.

According to Rentrak, the weekend overall generated about $101.6m in ticket sales, up 45% from the same weekend last year. The year to date stands at $8.2bn, which is up almost 20% from 2025.

– Associated Press contributed to this report