Nathan Fielder Demanded a 'Kill Switch' From A24 Before Filming 'You Can See Everything'

Nathan Fielder negotiated a contractual "kill switch" with A24 before shooting a single frame of "You Can See Everything," allowing the directors to abandon the Elizabeth Holmes documentary entirely if they found no fresh story. Co-director Lance Oppenheim disclosed the deal in an interview with IndieWire.

Fielder pushed for the provision because he feared the Theranos saga had already been exhausted on screen and in print. Holmes' downfall had already spawned a popular podcast, a best-selling book, Alex Gibney's documentary "The Inventor," and "The Dropout," the Hulu scripted series starring Amanda Seyfried. Fielder worried, in Oppenheim's words, that "the story had been told so many times already."

What did the kill switch actually say?

The clause let the directors scrap the film at any point and keep the freedom to explore without studio oversight. Oppenheim recalled Fielder's pitch to A24 verbatim:

"Nathan [said to A24], 'Well, do you think if Lance and I were to go and see if there was something there, would you be comfortable with giving us money and essentially just leaving us alone, and giving us a provision in our deal, whatever the money was, that we could just kill it at any time? If we didn't find something, we could just throw it all away, we could throw it in the garbage can.'"

"And they thankfully agreed," Oppenheim added.

The timing sharpened the stakes. The directors began work with 34 days left before Holmes reported to prison for defrauding Theranos investors. Fielder remained hesitant about whether the documentary could come together in that window.

The provision "changed everything," Oppenheim said. "This was the first time where I've ever been like, 'Oh, we actually have room to explore something without any pressure of anyone looking [over us],'" he told IndieWire. "I wish I could have that for every project, because then it really feels like you're just operating purely out of curiosity. You can essentially fish."

Why did Fielder want the right to deliver nothing?

Speaking separately to Wired, Fielder explained his reasoning in his own words.

"I told A24, 'I don't really know what the angle is, but there is something tickling in my brain.'"

"She was about to go to prison, so we didn't know what was gonna happen," Fielder said. "I was like, 'If you guys want, I'm down to go down and start filming and see what emerges. But we need the ability to deliver nothing to you guys if it doesn't work out.' And they said 'Sure.'"

Fielder said the clause removed pressure on both sides of the production. "It really meant I didn't have to hold back with her or with them," he told Wired. "Making a film, or any project, is very stressful. So if we had to pull the plug because it didn't work out, it would sort of be a relief to me. It's a very nice zone to operate in."

He added that he and Oppenheim had modest expectations from the start: "Lance and I both thought, 'Well, at the very least, this will be an interesting week or two that we'll have as a story.'"

The gamble paid off. "You Can See Everything" has become the buzziest documentary in current release, and the A24 deal that permitted its own destruction now stands as a template for how creative autonomy gets written into contracts rather than requested on set.