Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Posts Biggest Documentary Opening Since 2013

Paramount's "Street Fighter" won the weekend with about $31 million from 3,575 theaters, according to Saturday projections. It made $13 million on Friday, including Thursday previews. The $82 million film is a co-production between Legendary and Capcom and the first release in Paramount's distribution deal with Legendary.

The opening was softer than hoped. The studio had expected the film to land in the mid-$30 millions, and the $31 million figure came in below the $38.5 million May debut of Warner Bros.' "Mortal Kombat II." Audiences gave "Street Fighter" a B- CinemaScore — the same grade handed to the 1994 original starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Critics were less kind: the film holds 42 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, though its audience score sits at 80 percent. In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Frank Scheck called it a "jumbled tonal mess" that was "only sporadically entertaining." Directed by Kitao Sakurai, the film stars Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji.

The weekend's real story was playing in a quarter as many theaters. A24's "You Can See Everything," a documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, took in $5.5 million on Friday from just 855 locations and is projected to finish the weekend around $12 million to $12.5 million — well above the $7 million to $8 million it was expected to make. A24 reported roughly 750 sold-out screenings, with lines around the block at theaters in New York and Nashville. In New York and Los Angeles, three-quarters of ticket buyers were under 35.

The per-screen math tells the story. At roughly $14,000 per location, the documentary averaged about 60 percent more per theater than "Street Fighter." Its projected weekend would be the biggest opening for a documentary since 2013, when the concert-film hybrid "One Direction: This Is Us" debuted to $15.5 million. It would top the $7.1 million opening that Amazon MGM's "Melania" set in February, making it the biggest launch for a non-music documentary in more than a decade.

Reviews explain the turnout. The film holds 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and audiences, and its 4.8 average on Letterboxd is the highest the site has ever recorded for a title. Deadline reported that 91 percent of surveyed viewers would definitely recommend it — the kind of score that successful Marvel movies once put up.

"You Can See Everything" was made over more than three years by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, and runs three hours. It follows Holmes in the month before she began her 11-year prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors, and has been described as an unhinged portrait of the disgraced founder. A24 kept the project quiet until a surprise premiere at Telluride, and it was a late addition to this year's New York Film Festival lineup.

The timing is notable. Eight years after Theranos collapsed, and four years after Hulu's Emmy-winning limited series "The Dropout" told Holmes' story with Amanda Seyfried, audiences lined up for the documentary version. Last weekend, Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning" stalled at $5.5 million, and analysts suggested tech-world stories belonged on streaming. This weekend's numbers answer that.

The rest of the chart was crowded. The survival thriller "Whalefall" took in about $7 million, a soft start for the 20th Century Studios film. Focus Features' "Sense and Sensibility," directed by Georgia Oakley and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, is projected at $6.7 million — the best domestic debut in history for a period-set Jane Austen adaptation. Last weekend's winner, "Other Mommy," fell to about $7.85 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total to roughly $44.35 million.

Even with the crowded field, it was a healthy third weekend at the October box office — and a reminder that a documentary with a following can still outrun the wide releases around it.