Elizabeth Holmes’ New Documentary Made $15 Million in One Weekend, But the Real Scandal Is the Billionaires Who Believed Her

When I first saw the trailer for You Can See Everything, I genuinely thought I was watching a horror movie. Elizabeth Holmes staring into the camera with those enormous, unblinking eyes, the unsettling atmosphere and Nathan Fielder’s painfully awkward questioning made the whole thing feel like a psychological thriller.

I had no idea it was a documentary. And judging by the extraordinary box-office numbers, A24 knew exactly what it was doing. The documentary, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, opened to a staggering $15 million across just 855 North American screens, making it the biggest documentary opening since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.

Not bad for a nearly three-hour film about a woman whose spectacular corporate downfall has already inspired documentaries, podcasts, books and an Emmy-winning television series.

A24 Turned Elizabeth Holmes Into a Must-See Event

According to The Guardian, You Can See Everything sold out more than 2,000 screenings during its opening weekend. The film reportedly cost around $7 million to produce, meaning its opening performance has already generated considerable excitement about its commercial potential.

What fascinates me is how A24 accomplished this. Instead of revealing every shocking moment in the trailer, the studio told audiences almost nothing. The marketing campaign relied on Holmes’ unnerving appearance, Fielder’s strange interviewing style and the promise that something unexpected was coming.

And it worked. The mystery became the attraction. Audiences wanted to experience the surprises before somebody spoiled them online. Nathan Fielder, best known for Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, was practically made for this material. His deadpan delivery makes even an ordinary conversation feel increasingly uncomfortable.

But the documentary eventually becomes something more interesting than another examination of a disgraced Silicon Valley entrepreneur. It begins questioning the people around Holmes, the filmmakers themselves and even the audience watching.

Spoilers ahead.

Elizabeth Holmes Isn’t the Only Person Worth Questioning

The documentary follows Holmes during the 34 days before she entered federal prison in May 2023. Fielder and Oppenheim were invited into the California home she shared with her partner, Billy Evans, and their children.

Holmes continues insisting that Theranos’ blood-testing technology had genuine potential, even when Fielder presses her on the difference between something that might eventually work and something already proven to work.

That distinction was fundamental to the scandal. Theranos promised investors revolutionary testing capabilities it could not reliably deliver. Holmes was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors, although she was acquitted of charges involving patients.

The documentary doesn’t erase those facts. But it does introduce a more complicated question: Who controls the story of Elizabeth Holmes, and who benefits from telling it?

Billy Evans Might Be the Film’s Most Revealing Character

Initially, Evans appears to be the devoted partner standing beside Holmes as she prepares for prison. But the documentary gradually reveals his substantial involvement in managing her public image.

According to reporting about the film, Evans has power of attorney, controls Holmes’ X account and developed an AI representation of her. There are also uncomfortable revelations about his negotiations with the filmmakers, including attempts to secure a share of the documentary’s profits.

Those negotiations are particularly interesting because they complicate the impression that Evans is simply protecting his partner. He is also involved in a separate medical-testing venture, despite the obvious controversy surrounding Holmes’ history with Theranos.

And then comes Amanda Seyfried. The actress, who portrayed Holmes in The Dropout, appears in the documentary and participates in dramatic reconstructions of events that cameras couldn’t capture.

It is a fascinating creative decision. Suddenly, we’re watching an actress who once played Elizabeth Holmes help investigate the real Elizabeth Holmes’ relationship. The documentary becomes a hall of mirrors, where everyone appears to be performing for someone.

Is Holmes manipulating the people around her? Is Evans exploiting her notoriety? Are the filmmakers exploiting both of them? The film refuses to provide a comfortable answer.

What About the Powerful Men Who Helped Create Theranos?

This is where my interest in the story really begins. Holmes became the public face of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest scandals. But look at the extraordinary collection of wealthy and influential people who invested in Theranos.

Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, the DeVos family and other powerful investors put enormous sums into the company. These weren’t inexperienced people risking their savings on an unknown business. They were among America’s wealthiest and best-connected individuals.

And somehow, a company making extraordinary medical claims attracted hundreds of millions of dollars without its technology receiving the scrutiny those claims warranted. How does that happen?

We are constantly told that billionaires possess exceptional intelligence, judgment and business instincts. Their wealth is presented as evidence that they understand the world better than ordinary people.

Yet some of the wealthiest people in America invested enormous sums in a blood-testing technology that did not work as advertised. Where was the rigorous scientific verification? Where was the scepticism? Ordinary people applying for relatively modest loans can face extensive financial scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Theranos attracted astonishing investments because Holmes had the right connections, an extraordinary sales pitch and access to influential circles. Maybe the lesson isn’t that billionaires are unusually intelligent. Perhaps it’s that extraordinary wealth allows people to make extraordinarily expensive mistakes without facing the consequences an ordinary person would.

Elizabeth Holmes Deserves Accountability, but So Do the Systems That Enabled Her

The documentary also invites questions about Holmes’ relationships with powerful men, including former Theranos executive and partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

Their relationship began when Holmes was young, and Balwani was considerably older. It is reasonable to examine whether those dynamics influenced her decisions. But we should be careful not to turn speculation about Holmes’ psychology into a medical diagnosis or assume that difficult relationships remove her responsibility for misleading investors.

She was convicted of serious offences. And while the documentary might complicate our understanding of her personal circumstances, it cannot undo that verdict. What interests me more is the unequal attention given to different people’s suffering.

Holmes spent her final weeks before prison in a beautiful California beach house, surrounded by people willing to document her experience. There are countless women serving prison sentences who have experienced controlling relationships, financial exploitation or difficult personal circumstances.

Nobody is making elaborate A24 documentaries about them. Their stories rarely attract famous actresses, internationally recognised filmmakers or multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.

Holmes’ circumstances are considered fascinating partly because she once belonged to an extraordinarily privileged world. And that privilege remains central to her story.

The Real Scandal Is Bigger Than Elizabeth Holmes

What makes You Can See Everything so interesting is that it refuses to offer the simple morality tale audiences might expect. Holmes is responsible for her actions. But she did not build Theranos in isolation.

She operated within a system that rewards extraordinary promises, celebrates wealthy investors as visionaries and often treats access to powerful people as a substitute for demonstrated competence.

The documentary also reveals how easily someone’s image can become a product controlled by others. That doesn’t make Holmes innocent. It makes the story more revealing.

For me, the most disturbing question isn’t whether Elizabeth Holmes successfully manipulated a collection of billionaires. It’s why so many extraordinarily powerful people were willing to believe her in the first place.

And perhaps that is the documentary’s greatest achievement. It begins with an unsettling woman staring into a camera and ends by making us question the entire world that helped turn her into a Silicon Valley superstar.

Elizabeth Holmes went to prison. But the culture of wealth, influence and questionable judgment that helped make Theranos possible remains very much intact.