Why everyone is desperate to see ‘bonkers’ documentary that is selling out cinemas

You Can See Everything has already broken a 20-year box office record Stateside, becoming one of the best openings for a documentary.

And now across the pond in the UK, cinemas are bracing themselves for ‘bonkers’ demand for the eagerly anticipated film featuring convicted tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.

So much so that tickets for Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s 3-hour-long documentary are already selling out in a sweep of online demand.

The sore in interest from cinemagoers has even been compared to that of Greta Gerwig’s 2023 box-office smash Barbie.

Claire Binns, creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, said: ‘People are hungry in a way that we haven’t really seen since then.

‘And for it to be a three-hour documentary, it’s bonkers.’

The film, which opens on November 20 in the UK, went on sale at Picturehouse Central in London before it opened to rave reviews in America and Canada, forcing the chain to add extra screenings due to huge demand.

‘It’s fantastic,’ Binns said.

‘It proves again that there’s a different kind of audience coming to the cinema. They came to see Backrooms, they came to see Obsession, they came to see NAZA.

‘There’s a real appetite for smart films that talk to an audience differently than the studios have talked to them before. With this documentary, you’ve got a story that has been mined to some extent with the Dropout and podcasts. But I think the fact that Nathan Fielder spent a month with Elizabeth Holmes is a huge draw.

‘He’s a smart guy, and audiences want something they can relate to.’

As well as Picturehouse, Cineworld and Vue have revealed that they’ve received huge demand to see the film, saying: ‘The speed and scale of demand have been remarkable.’

The film has received unprecedented critical success in reviews, being called everything from ‘unspeakably ghastly’, ‘shocking’ and a ‘masterpiece’.

Holmes, 42, who was convicted after claiming she had created a revolutionary medical device, said she ‘didn’t understand’ how she was facing prison time as she was filmed for the secret documentary in the weeks before her imprisonment.

The Theranos founder claimed her start-up had developed a device that could detect a multitude of diseases and conditions from a few drops of blood.

Despite her fraud conviction, Holmes said in the chilling trailer for the film released earlier this year that she did not think she transgressed.

Holmes began serving her 11-year sentence in May 2023 at a federal prison in Texas.

Her former business partner Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, 61, was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison in California for his role in the scam and is set to be released in 2033.