With a record-breaking opening weekend at the box office under its belt, Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes film “You Can See Everything” is reportedly pursuing an awards campaign that could make it the first-ever documentary nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (Warning: This article contains spoilers for “You Can See Everything”).
Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.”
A24
Key Takeaways
- No documentary in history has ever been nominated for Best Picture, the Oscars’ top honor, but film distributor A24 is reportedly pushing forward with an awards campaign seeking to recognize “You Can See Everything” in the coveted category.
- The distributor is launching an Oscars campaign for consideration across most major categories, including Best Director for Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, another honor no documentary has ever notched.
- Aside from the top honors, A24 is also pushing for Oscars consideration for categories including editing, cinematography, costume design, production design, sound, original score and makeup and hairstyling, Variety reported.
- Recognition for documentaries in other categories is not impossible, but still rare: “Hoop Dreams,” a 1994 basketball documentary, landed a Best Editing nomination, while a handful of documentaries in recent years have been nominated for Best International Feature Film.
“You Can See Everything” Campaigns For Unprecedented Acting Nomination
(This section contains a major spoiler for “You Can See Everything”). Possibly even more surprising than a Best Picture nomination would be “You Can See Everything” landing an acting nomination for the film’s surprise star, who was revealed in the second half of the documentary to be Amanda Seyfried, years after she won an Emmy Award for playing Holmes in the Hulu series “The Dropout.” No documentary has ever landed a nomination in any acting category. Variety confirmed that Seyfried, who appears as herself and also plays Holmes in reenacted scenes, will be eligible at the Academy Awards, but current rules at the Golden Globe Awards would exclude her from consideration. A24 is pushing ahead with a supporting actress campaign for Seyfried, Variety reported. Also eligible in the acting categories is Christopher Abbott, who plays Holmes’ partner Billy Evans in the reenactments, and Fielder may be eligible to submit himself as an actor, but Variety reported he will not.
Are Oscar Odds For “You Can See Everything” Rising?
Variety has already predicted “You Can See Everything” will earn a Best Picture nomination, but it currently has “The Odyssey” pegged as the winner. It also predicts a nomination for best editing. The Hollywood Reporter went a step further, predicting nominations for best picture, director, supporting actress and editing.
Key Background
The awards campaign for “You Can See Everything” will likely be helped by the film’s stellar reviews and impressive box office performance. The movie has a near-perfect 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the social media site Letterboxd announced earlier this week the film has an average 4.7-star rating out of a possible 5 based on user reviews, making it the site’s highest-rated film. “You Can See Everything” earned the biggest opening weekend for a documentary in two decades, grossing $15 million from a limited opening of 855 theaters and selling out more than 2,000 screenings.
Tangent
“You Can See Everything” could face off against several other movies about tech billionaires at the Oscars. Also seeking a Best Documentary nomination is “Musk,” a four-hour film about the world’s wealthiest person, which has also garnered rave reviews from critics. “Artificial,” a forthcoming movie about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s brief 2023 ouster, has also garnered strong reviews and is considered by some awards pundits to be a contender.
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