Two Documentaries About Tech Founders Opened This Weekend. The Elizabeth Holmes One Made $15 Million. The Elon Musk One Made $307,000.

Last Wednesday we pointed out that the two best-reviewed movies reaching theaters this weekend were documentaries about Silicon Valley founders. Critics still agree. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything, which spends three years with Elizabeth Holmes, sits at 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Alex Gibney's Musk sits at 97.

Audiences did not split the difference. You Can See Everything made an estimated $15 million from 855 theaters, about $17,500 a screen. Musk made $306,702 from 472, about $650 a screen. That is a 27-to-1 gap between two movies critics rate within two points of each other.

Meanwhile Street Fighter won the weekend at 42 percent, making about twice what the Holmes movie did from four times as many theaters. Here is what happened from October 16 to 18, using Sunday studio estimates.

You Can See Everything: the opening nobody forecast

Variety's weekend preview had You Can See Everything opening around $8 million. It nearly doubled that, finishing second. It is the biggest opening for any film on fewer than 1,000 screens since Borat made $26.5 million in 2006. Leave out concert films and it is the biggest documentary opening since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which made nearly $24 million from 868 theaters in 2004.

For a closer comparison, Amazon MGM's Melania opened to $7.1 million from 1,778 locations earlier this year. A24 made more than twice that on fewer than half the screens, with a movie that runs 2 hours and 54 minutes and, per the Associated Press, cost less than $7 million to make.

The crowd is the story. A24 says more than 2,000 shows sold out and more than 70 percent of ticket buyers were under 35. More than 90 percent of moviegoers polled by PostTrak said they would definitely recommend it, which TheWrap noted beats the 81 percent The Odyssey drew this summer. "Everybody underestimated the movie," box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told the AP, crediting Fielder's following as a real draw.

The next marker is Won't You Be My Neighbor?, the Mister Rogers documentary that finished with $22.8 million in 2018. It needs about $7.8 million more. A24 has not said how wide it will go, or when it will stream.

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Musk: nearly the same reviews, a 27th of the business

Bleecker Street expanded Gibney's 3 hour and 55 minute documentary from four theaters to 472 on Friday. It made $306,702, for $394,912 so far.

It also had trouble telling anyone it existed. The film cannot advertise on X, which Musk owns. YouTube and Meta initially blocked its ads before relenting after pushback, and Bleecker Street says TikTok suspended the film's ad account this weekend before reinstating it.

The ad blackout is not the whole explanation. Musk runs an hour longer, with an intermission, and Fielder arrived with a young fan base already primed for anything strange he makes. Holmes has been mostly out of sight since she reported to prison in 2023. Musk is never out of sight. A movie about her plays like a mystery. A movie about him asks for four hours with a man most people already hear about every day. If you meant to wait for streaming, remember the complication we flagged last week: HBO holds those rights, and HBO now belongs to Paramount.

Street Fighter wins with a B-minus

Paramount and Legendary's Street Fighter opened at No. 1 with $31 million from 3,575 theaters, plus $20.1 million overseas for a $51.1 million global start, against a reported $82 million production budget. Audiences gave it a B-minus CinemaScore, the same grade as the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme version, according to TheWrap. The crowd was 69 percent male.

That lands below the $38.5 million Mortal Kombat II opened to in May, and TheWrap expects it to be just as front-loaded. The reviews are a split decision: 42 percent from critics, 79 percent from audiences. That is still more than double the 20 percent the Van Damme film holds, as our preview laid out. Whether it earns a place in our best-reviewed video game movies ranking is a harder fight.

Whalefall sinks, Sense and Sensibility floats

Whalefall is the weekend's costliest miss. Brian Duffield's survival thriller opened fourth with $8 million from 3,065 theaters and $17.5 million worldwide, against a $60 million budget. It holds 70 percent with critics, better than Street Fighter, and got a B CinemaScore. Squeezed between a video game brand and the weekend's breakout, it never found room.

Focus Features' Sense and Sensibility had the healthiest start of the new releases. It made $7.25 million from 2,545 theaters and drew an A-minus CinemaScore, the best grade of any new wide release this weekend, with 76 percent from critics and 88 percent from audiences. Good word of mouth usually means a long run.

The rest of the chart

• Other Mommy fell 70 percent. The D-plus horror movie that won last weekend made $8.35 million in its second weekend and has $44.9 million so far, on a budget of about $19 million.
• The Social Reckoning fell 69 percent. Aaron Sorkin's Facebook drama made $1.55 million and has $8.3 million total. The tech-on-trial October now has one hit, and it is the documentary.
• Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother expanded to 824 theaters. Mahershala Ali's hitman drama made $1.2 million, up 283 percent, and has $2.3 million total.
• Netflix reported a box office number for the first time. Its Spanish drama La bola negra made $277,500 from four screens, about $69,000 each, the best average in the country.
• The Devils came back uncut. Ken Russell's 1971 shocker made $1.64 million from 350 theaters as the first release from Warner Bros.' new Clockwork label.

All told, the weekend brought in about $101.6 million, up 45 percent from the same weekend last year.

What it means for Clayface on Friday

Clayface opens October 23, with full reviews reportedly due Wednesday. Forecasts have ranged from about $20 million to $33 million for a $40 million, R-rated body horror movie. If Street Fighter is as front-loaded as TheWrap expects, No. 1 is within reach. LAIKA's Wildwood and Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun open the same day. Our Clayface preview has the full picture, and our DC movies ranked list shows the bar it has to clear.

This weekend offered two lessons for it. Whalefall showed that good reviews alone will not fill seats. You Can See Everything showed that a strange movie with real buzz can outdraw everything except a brand name, on a quarter of the screens.

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