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'You Can See Everything' … as long as you go to Staten Island
By
Sonia Rao
Published Oct 27, 2026 at 11:18 a.m. ET
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Sonia Rao for Gothamist
By
Sonia Rao
Published Oct 27, 2026 at 11:18 a.m. ET
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Noah Elgart had an inkling the new documentary “You Can See Everything” would do well at the box office. When you’ve served as general manager at a movie theater — in this case, Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Cinemas — for over a decade, you start to develop a sense for that sort of thing.
What Elgart couldn’t have predicted is just how well the film would perform. In the second week of its theatrical run, weekend and weeknight screenings of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s bizarre Elizabeth Holmes film, for which they secretly spent time with the fraudulent businesswoman in the weeks leading up to her prison sentence, have continued to sell out across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Elgart said some of his auditoriums in Cobble Hill have even reached capacity on weekday afternoons.
The film’s distributor, A24, reported that the demand for tickets has been especially high in New York City, where more than a thousand showtimes have sold out since the film was released on Oct. 16.
“It’s very rare,” Elgart said. “I don’t know when the last time [was] that I saw a midweek two o’clock performance sell out in advance.”
It seems that if you want to see the film in Manhattan or Brooklyn anytime soon, you’ll have to settle for the front row. Or you could venture out of those boroughs and pivot to seeing it in the Bronx, Queens or Staten Island. A Monday afternoon visit to Fandango revealed that only 14 of nearly 200 seats had been purchased for a 6 p.m. screening that same evening at the Alamo Drafthouse on Staten Island. Many decent seats remained. By comparison, every single seat — save for one at the very end of the front row, arguably the worst seat in the house — had been purchased for a comparably timed and sized screening at Regal Essex Crossing on the Lower East Side.
The film, which was produced over a three-year period for around $7 million, made $15 million over its opening weekend. By the end of its second weekend in theaters, it had grossed more than $45 million total. A24 estimated that around 70% of the audience has been under 35 years old, which perhaps explains its popularity in certain parts of Brooklyn.
More than 3,000 screenings sold out on opening weekend itself, according to A24. Most of them were in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ryan Noonan, senior vice president of public relations at AMC Theatres, also singled out New York and Los Angeles as AMC markets with a “great response to the film.” Theaters have added more showtimes as a response.
That doesn’t mean it has gotten any easier to see “You Can See Everything” in certain parts of town. Josh Ben-Ami, a 31-year-old digital marketing manager living in Manhattan, said he and his partner probably visit AMC Lincoln Square 13 “a few times a month.” As a member of the AMC Stubs A-List, a popular rewards program, he’s usually pretty good at seeing buzzy movies early on. But he won’t be able to see this one until this upcoming Sunday, the third weekend of its theatrical run.
Ben-Ami compared the experience to trying to see “The Odyssey” in 70mm IMAX, a long and winding journey that couldn’t be more different from the one Fielder embarks on.
“That had been hyped since last year. It was a big Christopher Nolan movie. So I get why the demand for that was so great,” he said. “ I don’t think I ever expected or anticipated that ‘You Can See Everything’ would be the next ‘Odyssey’ in that regard.”
Elgart, the general manager at Cobble Hill Cinemas, noted that the length of the documentary also helps explain all the packed theaters. “You Can See Everything” clocks in at a whopping two hours and 54 minutes, which means theater programmers are forced to schedule fewer showtimes than they might have been able to for a 90-minute or two-hour film.
“The business of cinema is giving the people what they want, and if the people are calling for this film and there are no seats for it, you must tend to their needs,” Elgart said.
That said, it's also "very tough because you have studio relationships and you want to play everyone’s films, and you also want to have diverse audiences that like all different types of movies,” he said.
David Montague, a 29-year-old resident of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, was eager to watch “You Can See Everything” at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Brooklyn so he could go with a friend who lives nearby. He bought tickets as soon as they were available. But then he got a notification that he had been taken off the waitlist for another one of the hottest tickets in town — Harry Styles at Madison Square Garden — and knew he couldn’t pass that one up.
By the time Montague and his friend tried to buy new movie tickets, he said, they were sold out “from Harlem all the way down to Downtown Brooklyn.” Strangers on the subway recommended he go to the AMC Garden State Plaza 16 in Paramus, New Jersey, which took him by surprise.
“It’s crazy because people from New Jersey will go to the city to see a show like it’s nothing,” he said. “But it’s rare that people from the city will come to Jersey to go see anything.”
To see “Everything,” you might have to make the trip.
Tagged
brooklyn
manhattan
movies
queens
staten island
the bronx
Sonia Rao
Sonia Rao is a culture reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. She previously covered entertainment and breaking news at The Washington Post. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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