Analysts Send Holmes Documentary’s $15 Million Opening to an Outside Lab

ENCINO, Calif. — Box office analysts who tracked “You Can See Everything,” the documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, for a $7 million to $8 million opening have refused to accept its reported $15 million weekend until the number is verified by an independent laboratory.

“A nearly three-hour documentary, 855 theaters, more than 2,000 sellouts, and we’re supposed to take that on faith?” said Brent Forecastle, 39, senior tracking analyst at a forecasting firm that operates out of a former tanning salon. “I’ve seen this movie. Apparently everyone has. That’s what bothers me.”

The firm pricked a single ticket stub with a sterile lancet and sent it to a Van Nuys urgent-care lab with a request for 240 tests, including gross receipts, per-screen average, the film’s 99% Rotten Tomatoes score and whether more than 70% of the audience was really under 35.

“We can run one test on a ticket stub,” said lab supervisor Wanda Pipette, 58. “The result is that it’s a ticket stub.”

Forecastle said his doubts hardened when PostTrak exit polls found 91% of moviegoers would definitely recommend the film, “a number I have only ever seen on a pitch deck,” and again when he rewatched the viral trailer moment in which Holmes asks co-director Nathan Fielder, “Why would I deceive you?”

“That’s exactly what a distributor would say,” Forecastle said. “A24 made this in secret for three years, nobody was allowed to see it, and now it’s the biggest nonmusic documentary opening since ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ I’ve read that story. It was a bestseller.”

Hours after this story was filed, the lab returned its results. The $15 million held up. The only figure it could not reproduce was the firm’s own $7 million forecast, which Pipette said “appears to have been made up in a garage.”