Nathan Fielder negotiated a "kill switch" if You Can See Everything turned out to be nothing

But none of that was guaranteed, especially not by filmmaker Fielder, who negotiated an iron-clad escape hatch with the distributor before filming. According to co-director Lance Oppenheim in an IndieWire interview, Fielder was so concerned that Holmes’ story—already the subject of a popular podcast, book, and Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried—might have been so threadbare that he and Oppenheim would come away with little to justify the film’s eventual $7 million budget. Explains Oppenheim, “Nathan [said to A24], ‘Well, do you think if Lance and I were to go and see if there was something there, would you be comfortable with giving us money and essentially just leaving us alone, and giving us a provision in our deal, whatever the money was, that we could just kill it at any time? If we didn’t find something, we could just throw it all away, we could throw it in the garbage can.'”

A24 gambled that the Spermworld–The Rehearsal creative brain trust would emerge with a viable hook for their film, with veteran documentarian Oppenheim claiming that the unusual arrangement (which he called Fielder’s “kill switch”) offered unprecedented freedom. “This was the first time where I’ve ever been like, ‘Oh, we actually have room to explore something without any pressure of anyone looking [over us],’ the Primetime director explained. “ I wish I could have that for every project, because then it really feels like you’re just operating purely out of curiosity. You can essentially fish.”

Fielder himself praised A24’s risky deal, telling Wired, “I told A24, ‘I don’t really know what the angle is, but there is something tickling in my brain.’ She was about to go to prison, so we didn’t know what was gonna happen. I was like, ‘If you guys want, I’m down to go down and start filming and see what emerges. But we need the ability to deliver nothing to you guys if it doesn’t work out.’ And they said ‘Sure.'” Calling the fruitful, intense 34-day shoot with Holmes and her family before she reported to prison, “a very nice zone to operate in,” Fielder concluded, “Lance and I both thought, ‘Well, at the very least, this will be an interesting week or two that we’ll have as a story.'”