Street Fighter won its opening weekend, then lost Monday to Nathan Fielder's movie

The weekend went according to plan. Street Fighter opened at No. 1 with $31 million domestic from 3,575 theaters — a franchise record, for whatever that's worth against the 1994 film's $6.9 million — plus $20.1 million overseas for a $51.1 million worldwide start.

Then Monday happened. Per the daily numbers dissected on r/boxoffice, Street Fighter dropped to about $2 million and second place, behind You Can See Everything — the A24 documentary about Elizabeth Holmes co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. The doc took Monday from just 855 theaters, a quarter of Street Fighter's footprint.

The three-hour documentary eating a video game movie

You Can See Everything was already the weekend's real story before it won a weekday. It pulled about $15 million from those 855 screens — roughly $17,500 per theater against Street Fighter's $8,671 — on a reported $7 million budget, at a three-hour runtime.

That makes it the second-biggest opening ever for a non-concert documentary, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11. And it isn't done growing, as one r/boxoffice commenter noted while placing a bet on Friday's newcomer:

"I think it'll top Clayface. It's beating Street Fighter right now despite still only being in 1/4 of the amount of theaters. It's gonna blow up once it expands."

— a commenter on r/boxoffice

Why Street Fighter's Monday collapsed

The demographic data explains the shape of the drop. The opening audience was 69 percent male, with 35-44 as the biggest age bracket at 28 percent — and only 11 percent under 18. That's a nostalgia crowd that shows up on day one, not a word-of-mouth engine.

The word of mouth itself isn't coming to the rescue. The CinemaScore is a B-, the same grade the 1994 film got, and Rotten Tomatoes sits at 46 percent from critics with an audience score that slid from 83 to 79 within the opening days. On r/boxoffice, the forecast for the second frame is already brutal:

"Street Fighter headed for a 70%+ weekend drop."

— a commenter on r/boxoffice

The calendar agrees with the pessimists. Clayface and Wildwood both open Friday, October 23, and the DC horror film is aimed at the same young-male audience.

On Monday, Street Fighter averaged about $560 per theater. You Can See Everything averaged about $2,900 — from a quarter of the locations.

What's actually at stake

The budget is $82 million before marketing, which puts break-even somewhere past $200 million worldwide — and the film's ending openly teases a sequel. A $51 million worldwide start with a B- CinemaScore makes that sequel a question of overseas legs, not domestic goodwill.

Don't miss: Street Fighter post credit scene explained: who turns up, why Bison came to see him — and what it sets up for the sequel

So the next two weekends decide two things at once: whether Paramount's fighting game gamble earns its franchise plans, and whether the autumn's most improbable box-office run belongs to a three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary.

Previously we wrote: Is Nathan Fielder about to win an Oscar for a movie about Elizabeth Holmes?