DC’s “Clayface” won the weekend box office with about $24 million, but a three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes came within roughly $5 million of beating it. A24’s “You Can See Everything” earned $19.5 million in its second weekend, according to Variety, and that was more than it made when it opened.
Clayface: a modest start with good marks
“Clayface” opened in 3,458 North American theaters and added about $19 million overseas from 76 markets, for a global total near $43 million. That puts it at the lower end of the $25 million to $35 million the studio hoped for. Its reported budget is between $40 million and $44 million, which is small for a superhero film.
Audiences liked it. The film earned an A- CinemaScore, a rare grade for horror, and critics gave it a 76% score on Rotten Tomatoes against audience scores in the mid-90s. It is also the first R-rated movie in James Gunn’s DC universe, and it opened without a single IMAX screen because “Street Fighter” held them for two weeks.
The bar was set by the summer. DC’s “Supergirl” opened to $38 million in June, which is why the industry watched “Clayface” so closely. We previewed the weekend in our report on the box office forecast.
The documentary that kept growing
“You Can See Everything” follows comedian Nathan Fielder as he spends time with Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos. Fielder and Lance Oppenheim directed it. It opened in just 855 theaters, where it earned about $15 million, the biggest launch for a movie playing in fewer than 1,000 theaters since “Borat” in 2006. This weekend it expanded to 2,655 theaters and rose about 25%.
That kind of second-weekend gain is unusual. Most films fall after opening, and a documentary running three hours is not an obvious crowd-pleaser. About 70% of the opening audience was under 35, according to Boxoffice Pro.
What else opened
Three other films debuted: Laika’s stop-motion “Wildwood,” the romantic comedy “Wicker” from Black Bear, and Sony’s “Klara and the Sun,” starring Jenna Ortega.
What comes next
Next weekend brings the first Saturday Halloween since 2020, and “Clayface” enters it as the No. 1 movie in the country. Studios will watch how it holds up against a crowded slate of October horror.
