The new smash-hit documentary about disgraced biotech founder Elizabeth Holmes is fueling a fresh wave of fascination with the saga surrounding one of Silicon Valley’s biggest scandals.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film, “You Can See Everything,” follows Holmes, the ex-CEO of blood-testing startup Theranos, in the weeks before she began her 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors.
Ahead of the October 16 release of the nearly three-hour documentary, viewers flocked to Hulu’s 2022 miniseries, “The Dropout,” in which actor Amanda Seyfried starred as Holmes.
Streaming hours for the Hulu original show skyrocketed 186% in September over August and then surged 92% the week of “You Can See Everything’s” release compared to the week prior, a spokesperson for Disney, which owns Hulu, said.
The eight-episode series, also available on Disney+, has been streamed for over 2 million hours since September, the spokesperson said.
The renewed spotlight on the rise and fall of Holmes’ Theranos is also driving listeners back to ABC News’ “The Dropout” — the true crime podcast on which Hulu’s drama was based.
Plays of “The Dropout” podcast across Spotify and Apple climbed nearly 400% the week the “You Can See Everything” teaser trailer was released, from September 7 to September 13, according to data from ABC News provided by the Disney spokesperson.
Listenership was up more than 900% over the new film’s release weekend and has continued to soar, the spokesperson said, adding that Tuesday saw the highest number of plays in a single day since “You Can See Everything” was announced.
A Spotify spokesperson told Business Insider that Wednesday marked the “The Dropout” podcast’s biggest streaming day on the platform since the documentary’s release, with a 305% uptick in US listeners compared to the average listening volume over the prior 30 days.
The audiobook of “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” by journalist John Carreyrou, has also drawn a wave of new listeners. Carreyrou’s reporting for The Wall Street Journal exposed Theranos’ flawed blood testing devices.
According to the Spotify spokesperson, Carreyrou’s audiobook saw its biggest spike Thursday, with a 560% jump in US listeners.
The book sat at No. 6 on Amazon’s best seller list for business and money as of Friday.
In January 2022, following a nearly four-month trial, Holmes was convicted of four federal counts of conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to dupe investors in Theranos out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Holmes reported to a minimum-security women’s prison camp in Texas on May 30, 2023, after being handed an 11-year-and-three-month sentence.
The onetime Silicon Valley darling repeatedly claimed Theranos — once valued at $9 billion — had developed a revolutionary blood analyzer capable of running hundreds of tests with only a few drops of blood from a finger.
