Elizabeth Holmes mania: how the buzziest film of the year has resurrected a gut-twisting TV drama
Nathan Fielder’s documentary about Elizabeth Holmes has become a major US cinema hit, prompting renewed interest in the Theranos fraud and a surge in audiences for earlier coverage. Its success matters because it has revived public attention not only in Holmes’s story but also in how her claims and company were portrayed.
Released two weeks ago, You Can See Everything is now the highest-grossing US documentary in 15 years. The article says John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood has returned to bestseller lists, the ABC podcast The Dropout has seen listeners rise by 900%, and Disney/Hulu’s 2022 series has gained 700% more viewers. The series dramatises Holmes’s rise and the relationship with Sunny Balwani, while the podcast revisits Theranos’s claims about blood testing.
In short
- Nathan Fielder’s Holmes documentary has become a record-breaking US hit.
- Interest in the Theranos story has surged across books, podcasts and TV.
- The Dropout series’ viewers rose by 700%.
Explained simply
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, a health technology company that claimed it could run many tests using only a few drops of blood. The claims attracted investors and public attention, but investigations by journalist John Carreyrou and others found that the company’s testing technology did not work as advertised.
Holmes and former Theranos executive Sunny Balwani were convicted in separate criminal trials over the company’s fraud. Their story has since been told in books, podcasts and television, including the series The Dropout, which dramatises Holmes’s rise and her relationship with Balwani.