Topline
Streams of “The Dropout,” the Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried as the one-time billionaire and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, surged 400% within one day of new documentary “You Can See Everything” opening in theaters, as journalist John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood” and other Holmes-related content also spike.
Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder in “You Can See Everything.”
A24
Key Facts
The 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout” logged 3.8 million minutes watched on Saturday, the day after “You Can See Everything” opened in theaters—a 400% increase from the day prior, when it recorded 760,000 minutes watched, according to data from Luminate.
The series has continued to spike since then, hitting a year-to-date peak of 6.1 million minutes watched on Monday alone, according to Luminate.
“The Dropout” began to surge in September after the documentary was announced, with the show logging 36.6 million minutes viewed that month—more than a 220% jump from August, when it recorded about 11.3 million total minutes viewed, according to Luminate data.
Paperback sales of “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by Carreyrou, who wrote a series of articles exposing Holmes and Theranos for the Wall Street Journal, rose for the week ending Sept. 26 and are up 36% year-to-date compared with this point last year, according to Circana BookScan.
Spotify audiobook streams of Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood” have spiked a whopping 715% in the United States—reflecting listening from Sept. 23 to Oct. 13, compared with the four weeks leading up to the film’s September Telluride Film Festival premiere—while listening also surged 673% for ABC News’ “The Dropout” podcast and 342% for Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood: The Final Chapter” podcast, according to data shared with Forbes by Spotify.
What Do We Know About “You Can See Everything”?
Holmes invited a film crew led by comedian and filmmaker Nathan Fielder into her home, one month before she began serving her federal prison sentence, to “document her every move,” according to A24. The film, which runs for nearly three hours, debuted at a surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival in September. The film premiered to uniformly rave reviews, boasting a near-perfect 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. A critic for The Wrap called it the “documentary to end all documentaries,” while The Guardian dubbed it a “modern masterpiece of deceit.” The movie’s success has sparked Oscar buzz, with A24 launching a Best Picture campaign that could potentially see the film become the first-ever documentary nominated for the Oscars’ top honor. Tyler Shultz, a Theranos whistleblower, responded to the documentary, alleging Holmes misled Fielder by showing him technology that was “never used” on patients.
forbes valuation
Holmes is worth $0, according to Forbes estimates—a far cry from her peak net worth of an estimated $4.5 billion in 2015, which was based on her 50% stake in Theranos. The following year, Forbes revised her net worth to nothing after allegations Theranos’ technology did not work, as well as numerous federal investigations, eroded the value of her biotech startup. In revising Holmes’ net worth, Forbes noted Theranos had “presented no data proving its systems work” and cited experts who questioned whether the company was really worth nearly as much as industry giants like Quest Diagnostics, which was worth $11 billion at the time.
key background
Holmes, a Stanford University dropout, founded Theranos in 2003, which falsely promised it would revolutionize blood testing by performing a range of tests using just a few drops of blood. Despite attracting high profile investors and board members and peaking at a $9 billion valuation, a series of investigative reports by the Wall Street Journal found Theranos’ blood testing technology didn’t really work, and the company was actually performing most tests on equipment bought from other companies. As lawsuits and investigations piled up, Theranos dissolved in 2018. Holmes, hit with federal fraud charges, was found guilty by a jury on four of 11 counts in 2022. She is serving an 11-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas, but last month, she was approved to transfer to a halfway house next August.
surprising fact
“You Can See Everything” grossed $15 million in a limited opening of fewer than 1,000 theaters, achieving the best opening weekend for a documentary in two decades. The movie blew past initial projections of about $8 million for its opening weekend, and it more than doubled the opening weekend gross of “Melania,” one of the most recent documentaries to get a wide release. To date, “You Can See Everything” has grossed more than $18 million, and the film will expand to a wide release this weekend.
tangent
“You Can See Everything” is opening in theaters amid a wave of movies about billionaires, current and former. The movie hits theaters a week after “Musk,” a four-hour documentary about Tesla and SpaceXAI billionaire Elon Musk, opened in a limited number of theaters. The documentary has been hailed by critics, notching a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes—and it has sparked the ire of the titular tech mogul, who has attacked director Alex Gibney as “absolute scum of the Earth” and a “horrible human,” among many other pejoratives. “The Social Reckoning,” a sequel to “The Social Network” starring Jeremy Strong as Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, also opened in theaters last week, but bombed at the box office and earned middling reviews. Opening in December is “Artificial,” a film by Luca Guadagnino about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s brief ouster from the company in 2023. The movie stars Andrew Garfield as Altman and reportedly includes depictions of several other billionaires, including Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever.