Sell-outs ahead of the UK release

The You Can See Everything documentary reaches UK cinemas on 20 November, but tickets for advance screenings began selling out a month before that date. The film arrives on the back of a $15m (£11.3m) opening weekend in the US, where more than 2,000 screenings sold out across 855 cinemas - the biggest documentary opening in more than 20 years.

Picturehouse Central in London put tickets on sale before the US opening and added extra screenings. At the Ritzy in Brixton, the first screen nearly sold out and the cinema opened a second showing. Cineworld put tickets on sale at about 40 cinemas on a Sunday, sold out its initial screenings at Leicester Square, added more showings there and expanded bookings to a further 35 cinemas nationwide.

'Bonkers' demand, says Picturehouse

Clare Binns, creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, said the excitement recalled the 2023 response to Greta Gerwig's Barbie.

In Binns's view, that hunger applies even to a three-hour documentary - her word for the scale of it was "bonkers". The film, she said, shows a different kind of cinema audience exists. "They came to see Backrooms, they came to see Obsession, they came to see NAZA," she said of prior draws.

Chains on the buzz

Stuart Crane, Cineworld's international vice-president of content, said "the speed and scale of demand has been remarkable".

Vue saw the same pattern. Dean Cross, its senior screen content manager, said the chain was "seeing incredible buzz both within the industry and amongst cinemagoers", and that it was "particularly encouraging to see a documentary capturing the attention of younger audiences".

More than 70% of the opening-weekend audience in the US was under 35.

From Telluride to a viral trailer

The Nathan Fielder documentary was unveiled at a secret screening at the Telluride festival in Colorado in September, where audiences had to surrender their phones. A teaser trailer released the same day quickly went viral.

The film's subject, disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, joined the online conversation, responding to tweets about the film and its trailer. Binns said Fielder spending a month with Holmes is a huge draw, and that audiences want something they can relate to.

The film is co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and has won widespread critical acclaim; The Guardian called it "a modern masterpiece of deceit".

Binns said younger audiences want shared experiences. "Everybody is aware cinema has to change, it has to offer customers something different. But never rule us out," she said.

You Can See Everything opens in UK cinemas on 20 November.