Will ‘You Can See Everything’ Catch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ to Be the Highest-Grossing Documentary Ever?

It’s too early to say if Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s “You Can See Everything” will win Oscars or have a direct impact on history as it pertains to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, but it does feel like a movie that journalists are going to be referencing for a long time as a significant benchmark for documentary films at the box office.

Currently sitting at $45.1 million domestic, with no international release to speak of yet, A24’s film is already one of the highest-grossing documentaries ever. Domestically (not factoring inflation) it has already placed firmly within the top 10 and has obliterated films like “Free Solo” ($17.5 million), “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” ($22.8 million), and “An Inconvenient Truth” ($24.1 million). It has surpassed some big nature docs like “Earth,” “Chimpanzee,” and lags only “March of the Penguins” ($77.4 million), and it has surpassed concert docs like “Katy Perry: Part of Me” ($25.3 million) and “One Direction: This Is Us” ($28.8 million) but lags the Michael Jackson doc “This Is It” ($72 million) and “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” ($73 million).

If we want to put a bunch of really dumb caveats and qualifiers on it, “You Can See Everything” is already domestically the highest-grossing non-concert, non-political, non-nature docs ever made, a made-up distinction previously held, by my count, by “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (sorry Mister Rogers).

But even if it passes all those other movies, it might still fall short of the documentary that remains far and away the biggest box office hit for a doc ever, Michael Moore‘s 2004 film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore’s scathing takedown of President Bush and the Iraq War as released in the heat of a massive election year.

Moore’s film did not win the Oscar (though it did win the Palme D’Or at Cannes) because it was ineligible after airing on TV ahead of the election, and it did not prevent George W. Bush from being re-elected to a second term, and it probably isn’t even Moore’s best film. But it’s worth remembering just how seismic an event the film was upon its release, not unlike the stir that initial cryptic, meme-worthy teaser of Fielder and Holmes was.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11, President George W. Bush shouting at Michael Moore, 2004, (c) Lions Gate/courtesy Everett Collection©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection

Moore was already a firebrand with instant name recognition thanks to “Bowling for Columbine,” which was previously among the highest-grossing documentaries ever. But “Fahrenheit 9/11” carried with it even more publicity and attention, including because of the fight to get it to screens in the first place. Disney famously blocked Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax from releasing “Fahrenheit 9/11,” leading the Weinsteins to buy the film back and then partner with Lions Gate and IFC Films to get the movie into theaters. It even had to do so within an incredibly quick turnaround time of 24 days to get prints made and get the film delivered to theaters. Even then, Lions Gate co-president Tom Ortenberg was predicting that the film was going to disrupt distribution and set the record as the biggest documentary ever.

He was right. “Fahrenheit 9/11” opened on just 868 screens on June 25, but it was the No. 1 movie in America with $23.9 million, beating out other new releases like “White Chicks” and “The Notebook.” “You Can See Everything” opened to a similar number of theaters but made only $15.6 million in that first weekend. By July 4 weekend it had expanded to nearly double the theaters and made another $22 million, and by its fifth weekend was over $100 million. The film ultimately played in theaters for 15 weeks into October ahead of the election. Domestically, it made $119.1 million and even made an additional $103 million abroad to bring its worldwide total to $222.4 million. “This Is It” actually has the edge worldwide with $267.9 million, but the bulk of that came from overseas audiences.

The film sparked serious headlines about whether it would damage Bush in the election, and it was a big enough media sensation that “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury lashed out at Moore as a “jerk.” Other filmmakers had released parody documentaries against Moore, and it earned sharp criticisms from political pundits disputing its accuracy. Moore’s follow-up movie “Sicko” received an even larger budget of $9 million from the Weinsteins, and it too grossed above “Bowling for Columbine” with $24.5 million domestic.

Clearly the conditions under which documentaries are released in theaters have changed drastically since “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Such a film would most likely today open on streaming, and in today’s hyper-polarized political climate, might struggle to be platformed by gun-shy distributors and streamers. And the market for all documentaries in theaters has fallen drastically in the post-Covid era. “Melania” was previously the highest-grossing doc of 2026 with $16.6 million domestic, but that one is an outlier for a number of reasons.

For “You Can See Everything” to catch “Fahrenheit 9/11,” it would have to put up “Obsession” levels of word of mouth, continually notching up at the box office this coming weekend as it continues to add screens, and the film already tripled its screen count in Weekend 2. But a long theatrical run and an awards push could realistically get it into the 70s and help it push for the Top 5 among docs.

You can see everything, yes, but even we didn’t necessarily see that one coming.