'Clayface' Tops the Box Office, but Elizabeth Holmes Is Closing In

DC's "Clayface" opened at No. 1 in North American theaters with about $24 million from Thursday night through Sunday, according to Rentrak, which compiles box office data. But the real story sat just behind it: "You Can See Everything," a nearly three-hour documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, collected roughly $20 million in its second weekend and now stands at about $45 million domestically.

Call it villain versus villain. On one side, a shape-shifting Batman antagonist in an R-rated horror film. On the other, the disgraced founder of Theranos (the failed blood-testing startup), playing herself.

How 'Clayface' performed

"Clayface" cost Warner Bros. and its DC Studios division $44 million to make — inexpensive, at least by superhero standards. Reviews were mostly positive.

The opening still landed at the low end of prerelease analyst expectations. Warner Bros. said the film added $19 million overseas, for a global opening total of about $43 million.

That context matters. DC's previous release, "Supergirl," was a box office disaster in July: $126 million worldwide against production and marketing costs of at least $270 million. Studios typically split ticket sales 50-50 with theaters, which makes that gap even worse than it looks.

Against that backdrop, a modest but profitable opening for a cheap DC title reads less like a triumph and more like a relief.

Why the documentary is the surprise

A24's "You Can See Everything" has done something documentaries almost never do. Demand stayed so strong in its second weekend that A24 expanded the film to 2,655 theaters — more than triple its opening-weekend footprint, and an exceptionally wide release for the format.

The numbers back that up. Roughly $20 million in weekend two, with a domestic total of about $45 million and climbing. A three-hour documentary about a corporate fraud case holding within $4 million of a horror superhero release is, statistically, an outlier.

What does this change?

For DC, it suggests the low-budget strategy can work as a hedge — a $44 million film doesn't need blockbuster numbers to clear its bar. For A24 and documentary distribution more broadly, it demonstrates that nonfiction can sustain a wide theatrical footprint past opening weekend when audience interest holds.

The gap between the two films is now $5 million on the weekend and shrinking overall, since the documentary's domestic total already exceeds "Clayface's" global take. If the expansion keeps pulling audiences, the villain story of the summer may not be the one in makeup.