What the fuck…
Yes, our number one movie might be Street Fighter, but the biggest story of the week is You Can See Everything, which somehow brought in $15 million on only 800 screens (it’s not even playing where I live…and we got whatever the fuck Monster Mia is here!). That’s the second-best opening for a documentary ever, behind only 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (sorry, Swifties, but I’m not counting concert documentaries). Just how the hell did this happen? Did a meme of Elizabeth Holmes smiling like an undead zombie really sell this? Well, kind of.
Unlike pretty much any other documentary ever released (except for maybe Catfish), You Can See Everything was kept “top secret”—this is the first time I’ve ever heard people say “don’t read spoilers!!!” for such a motion picture. Then the social media hype took over with influencers calling the movie “fucking insane.” All of this and your mother still probably has no idea who Elizabeth Holmes even is. Of course, Holmes is a manipulative liar who knows how to use the media to her advantage, so I dunno, I’m not really crazy about a movie that paints her as sympathetic (DON’T SPOIL IT FOR ME IF IT DOES!!!!). And despite currently being locked up, Holmes remains very active on Twitter, so either she has a cell phone in prison, or she has someone on the outside tweeting for her (it’s the latter, probably).
Speaking of Twitter, another high profile documentary opened in the form of Musk, which is four hours long compared to You Can See Everything’s three-hour runtime. Why are these films about real life shitty people so fucking long? Anyway, no one wanted to spend four hours watching Musk when they can endure him on the news every day for free, but that may also be because people didn’t even know it was playing due to a lot of “errors” causing its advertising to be blocked online. Hmmmm.
Moving onto Street Fighter, which is technically the winner this week, although it’s on the lower end of expectations. Reviews have overall been kinder to video game movies in recent years, including Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat II, and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. That goodwill didn’t extend to Street Fighter, which got a swift KO from critics. Does that even matter for a kick flick like this? Probably not. Technically, Street Fighter is already approaching the final $34 million domestic total the 1994 film made, but c’mon. That was over thirty years ago. Obviously Paramount was wanting more here.
Also wanting more was Whalefall, the gritty live-action remake of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. Since Austin Abrams didn’t suffer enough in Resident Evil, the poor guy now has to be eaten alive by a whale. It’s like Gravity except in a stomach. Even with a solid critical reception, Whalefall only swallowed $8 million.
Oh right Sense and Sensibility opened. That made $7.5 million. I guess that makes sense?
Anyway, the top ten, via Deadline
- Street Fighter (Par) 3,575 theaters, Fri $13M Sat $10.8M Sun $7.2M 3-day $31M/Wk
- You Can See Everything (A24) 855 theaters, Fri $5.5M Sat $5.2M Sun $4.2M 3-day $15M/Wk 1
- Other Mommy (Uni) 3,370 (+5) Fri $2.59M (-79%) Sat $3.49M Sun $2.27M 3-day $8.35M (-70%), Total $44.8M/Wk 2
- Whalefall (20th) 3,065 theaters, Fri $3M 3-day $8M/Wk 1
- Sense and Sensibility (Foc) 2,545 theaters, Fri $3.3M Sat $2.2M Sun $1.68M 3-day $7.25M/Wk 1
- Verity (AMZ) 3,072 (-500) theaters, Fri $2.1M (-48%) Sat $2.4M Sun $1.68M 3-day $6.2M (-48%), Total $66.1M/Wk 3
- Resident Evil (Sony) 2,705 (-380) theaters, Fri $1.6M (-32%) Sat $2.3M Sun $1.5M 3-day $5.5M (-35%), Total $148.5M/Wk 5
- Heart of the Beast (Par) 3,049 (-316) theaters, Fri $1.45M (-26%) Sat $2.05M Sun $1.33M 3-day $4.83M (-35%) Total $58.6M/Wk 4
- Jailer 2 (Shloka) 420 theaters, Fri $890K Sat $1.28M Sun $1.09M, 3-day $3.25M, Total $5.3M/Wk 1
- Forgotten Island (Uni) 2,149 (-749) theaters, Fri $600K (-47%) Sat $1M Sun $2.25M 3-day $2.25M (-52%), Total $35.1M/Wk 4