This weekend’s box office had a clear winner and a genuine surprise. Paramount’s video game adaptation Street Fighter landed at No. 1 as expected, but the movie everyone is talking about is a three-hour documentary playing in fewer than 900 theaters. Here’s what happened at the movies from October 16 to 18, based on Sunday studio estimates.

‘Street Fighter’ lands a solid, not spectacular, opening

The Paramount, Legendary and Capcom take on the classic fighting game opened to an estimated $31 million from 3,575 theaters, according to Deadline. That includes about $4 million from Thursday previews.

It’s a respectable start, but Deadline reports Paramount had hoped for more. For comparison, this spring’s Mortal Kombat 2 opened to $38.5 million. The PG-13 Street Fighter earned a B- CinemaScore from audiences, and critics were lukewarm, with a 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film cost a reported net $82 million, co-financed by Legendary and Capcom.

One fun bit of context: this single opening weekend comes close to the entire domestic run of the 1994 Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, which finished with $33.4 million, not adjusted for inflation.

The documentary nobody saw coming

The real headline belongs to A24’s You Can See Everything, a nearly three-hour documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Co-directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder, the film follows Holmes and her partner Billy Evans in the period before she reported to federal prison.

Playing in just 855 theaters, it pulled in an estimated $15 million, a per-theater average of about $17,500. Deadline calls it the second-best opening ever for a documentary, behind only 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 at $23.9 million. It also edged past the estimates from earlier in the weekend.

The buzz is real. Deadline reports more than 2,000 sellouts over the weekend, and the film has posted a 4.8 average on Letterboxd, the highest ever recorded on the platform. Younger audiences turned out in force: A24 told Deadline that 70% of ticket buyers were under 35. The film reportedly cost less than $10 million to make, and A24 plans to expand it more widely next weekend.

The rest of the top five

Further down the chart, it was a mixed weekend for newcomers, according to The Numbers and Deadline:

  • 3. Other Mommy (Universal): about $8.35 million in its second weekend, down 70%, for a running total near $44.8 million.
  • 4. Whalefall (20th Century Studios): an estimated $8 million debut, well below pre-release tracking for the thriller, which Deadline reports cost a net $60 million.
  • 5. Sense and Sensibility (Focus Features): about $7.25 million. The new Jane Austen adaptation from director Georgia Oakley earned an A- CinemaScore and drew a strongly female audience.

Holdovers rounding out the top 10 included Verity, Resident Evil, Heart of the Beast, Jailer 2 and Forgotten Island.

A healthy October overall

Despite a couple of soft openings, the overall weekend was strong. Deadline estimates the total box office at around $107 million, well ahead of the same weekend last year, when Black Phone 2 led with a $27.3 million opening. That makes it one of the better mid-October frames since the pandemic.

What to watch next weekend

The big question is how far You Can See Everything can go once it widens its release. Documentaries rarely sustain this kind of momentum, but word of mouth is exceptionally strong. Street Fighter, meanwhile, will need to hold up against its middling reviews to stay on top.

The wrap-up

Street Fighter took the crown, but the weekend’s story was a small, strange, much-discussed documentary that packed theaters across the country. If you’ve been looking for a sign that audiences will still show up for something different, this was it. Whether you’re in the mood for arcade-style action or a deep dive into one of tech’s most infamous stories, there’s plenty on the big screen right now.

Image: Free movie theater seats, close via Rawpixel, CC0 1.0