DC’s shape-shifting villain squished his way to the top of the box office this weekend, with Clayface opening at No. 1 with an estimated $24 million-plus, according to Deadline. Right on his heels is A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything, which Deadline says is tracking for a second weekend of $19 million to $20 million. That’s a remarkable number for a documentary in any week, and it’s actually bigger than its opening.
One important caveat before anyone pops the champagne: these are Saturday morning estimates. Deadline labeled its figures as Saturday AM numbers, and final Sunday actuals haven’t been published yet. So treat every dollar sign below as a very educated guess.
How Clayface Opened
Deadline put it plainly: “DC’s ‘Clayface’ is off to a solid start with $24 million-plus at the weekend box office for No. 1. Right behind is ‘You Can See Everything’ at $20M.”
The math behind that call starts with a $10.4 million Friday, including Thursday previews, from 3,458 North American theaters, according to Deadline. That pace points to a $24 million to $25 million opening weekend. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both reported that the film earned $3.5 million from Thursday previews alone, with THR putting the theater count at more than 3,400.
Audiences seem pretty happy, too. Deadline reported that Clayface earned an A- CinemaScore, the kind of grade that usually signals good word of mouth heading into week two.
Critics have warmed to it as well. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Frank Scheck called it “a big swing that definitely pays off.”
Directed by James Watkins, the film stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, the actor who becomes the gooey Batman foe. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was made for a production budget of $44 million.
Why $24 Million Is a Win for DC
On its own, a $24 million opening might not sound like a superhero blockbuster. Context is everything, though.
Clayface is the third DCU theatrical release under James Gunn, following Superman and Supergirl. Supergirl opened to $37.1 million, but with a budget north of $170 million it was considered a box office disappointment. Clayface is a very different kind of bet: a smaller, stranger, villain-centered movie on roughly a quarter of that budget.
Pre-weekend projections for Clayface were all over the map, ranging from $22 million to $35 million depending on who you asked. Landing in the mid-$20 millions puts it toward the lower end of that range. Still, with a $44 million price tag, a strong CinemaScore and good reviews, the studio has reason to feel optimistic. Clay is flexible, after all. So is the definition of success when your budget is this lean.
Is You Can See Everything a Sleeper Hit?
If Clayface is the headliner, You Can See Everything is the scene-stealer.
The A24 documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, according to Variety. Yes, that Nathan Fielder, the man who turned awkward social experiments into an art form. Pairing him with Holmes, whose story is all about carefully staged appearances, sounds almost too perfect.
The film was already turning heads before this weekend. Deadline reported that it opened to $15.6 million from just 855 theaters. That was the largest documentary launch in roughly 20 years, not counting concert films.
Then A24 went wide. The Hollywood Reporter said the documentary expanded from 855 theaters to roughly 2,600 to 2,655 locations for its second weekend. It collected $6.1 million on its second Friday from 2,600 North American locations, THR reported, bringing its domestic total to $31.7 million.
Here’s where it gets fun. Deadline has it tracking for $19 million to $20 million this weekend, with some rival studios suggesting $20 million-plus is still on the table. If that holds, the movie would grow by roughly a quarter from its debut. Documentaries rarely open this big, and growing in week two is rarer still.
Heading into the weekend, projections for its second frame ranged from $18 million to $25 million, so the current estimates sit comfortably inside expectations. The “eyeing $20M” figure remains just that for now. As with Clayface, no final number has been confirmed.
What’s Next
The real verdicts arrive when Sunday actuals come in. For Clayface, the question is whether that A- CinemaScore and positive reviews translate into a gentle second-weekend drop. For You Can See Everything, the question is how high a documentary can climb once it hits thousands of screens.
So is it a sleeper hit? Based on Saturday estimates, it’s looking less like a sleeper and more like a wide-awake phenomenon. A Nathan Fielder movie about Elizabeth Holmes going toe-to-toe with a DC superhero film at the box office is not a sentence anyone expected to write this year. And yet, here we are.
