In July 2012, The Imposter, an unnerving documentary about a French con artist who tricked a Texas family into believing he was their long-lost relative, debuted in one American theater.

Boasting a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and plaudits from festival screenings across the globe, the movie eventually maxed out at 31 theaters and just under $900,000 in domestic grosses respectable figures for a doc, but nowhere near zeitgeist-shattering.

The following year, Netflix added The Imposter to its ballooning streaming library. Since then, its become one of the decades defining documentaries , a stranger-than-fiction conversation starter about stolen identity. Presaging the true-crime boom that would crystalize with The Jinx, Making a Murderer and the podcast Serial, Bart Laytons film now regularly appears on lists of must-see docs . Other documentarians cite it as a bar-raiser for the genre all for something that didnt even crack $1 million at the box office.

The Imposter is a case study in the nonfiction landscapes ever-shifting tides. Once the purview of liberal-leaning metropolises with art-house cinemas, documentaries have assumed a wider footprint in the streaming era. Netflix, Hulu and other platforms are providing mainstream homes for stories that produce titillating water-cooler fodder, from celebrity profiles (Iris) and mouth-watering jubilees (Jiro Dreams of Sushi) to human-interest oddities (The Wolfpack) and searing political digests (13th).

In fact, streaming services documentary evangelism is creating a ripple effect. Now that gobs of docs exist a mere click away, audiences are showing an enhanced interest in seeing nonfiction curiosities on the big screen an unlikely turn of events given how much movies outside the superhero and horror genres are suffering commercially.

This summer alone, RBG and Wont You Be My Neighbor? , films about long-serving Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and gentle-hearted television host Fred Rogers, have held their own during a season saturated with franchise-affiliated cash cows. Both cracked the box offices Top 10, marking the first time since 2012 that more than one documentary has done so in the same calendar year.

As Peak TV reaches unprecedented zeniths, could we be inching toward the days of Peak Documentary?