The last time a documentary opened this big, Michael Moore was angry about Iraq and people still bought newspapers.

"You Can See Everything," the nearly three-hour film about Elizabeth Holmes directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, earned $15 million over the weekend from just 855 screens, with more than 2,000 sold-out showings, according to A24, the film's distributor. That makes it the largest opening for a film playing on fewer than 1,000 screens since "Borat" arrived in 2006, and the biggest nonmusic documentary debut in two decades — since "Fahrenheit 9/11" made nearly $24 million from 868 theaters in 2004.

The film, which was made in secret over three years, follows Mr. Fielder as he spends more than a month with the disgraced Theranos founder and her family before she reports to federal prison. Reviews have been, to use the technical term, extremely good: 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 99 on Metacritic. (One imagines the holdouts are litigators.)

"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. More than 70 percent of the opening weekend audience was under 35, suggesting that the film's appeal owes something to Mr. Fielder's following and something to the enduring strangeness of Ms. Holmes herself.

The weekend's official winner was Paramount's "Street Fighter," which took first place with $31 million from 3,575 theaters. But winning and mattering are not always the same thing. "Whalefall," a $60 million survival thriller from Disney, opened to $8 million despite strong reviews — a reminder that being well-liked and being seen are different problems.

Meanwhile, Alex Gibney's four-hour Elon Musk documentary, "Musk," expanded to 472 screens and made $306,702. The film has had difficulty advertising on major social media platforms, including X, which Mr. Musk owns, and TikTok, which this weekend permanently suspended the film's ad account, according to distributor Bleecker Street. The marketplace of ideas, it seems, has a landlord.

Original story published in Fast Company: "New Elizabeth Holmes documentary scores thousands of sellout showings on its opening weekend"