YouTuber Markiplier funded and created his first feature film, Iron Lung, entirely on his own. In its opening weekend, it made four times its $3 million budget.
Mark Edward Fischbach, known to tens of millions on YouTube as Markiplier, has always been used to working solo. That's why for his first full-length movie, he didn't just stick to directing but also took on the main acting duties, wrote the script, edited the film, funded it, and handled its distribution.
His debut is a gripping horror adaptation of the video game Iron Lung, hitting theaters in a big way. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the story follows a convict—played by Fischbach himself—who navigates an ocean of blood in a submarine. As he searches for rare resources, he uncovers increasingly unsettling and terrifying secrets.
You can catch the film at our Cinema City Eurovea starting from January 30th.
Fischbach told Variety that the mystery of the original game motivated him to bring it to the big screen. “When you play that game, you can't help but wonder what's really going on,” he says. According to him, there are few games that leave you wanting to understand their entire world after finishing them.
Thanks to his success on YouTube and financial freedom, he could fund the movie himself. He claims profit doesn’t matter to him, as the platform treated him fairly and allowed him to take risks others couldn't. Completing the film is a personal success. “Even if just ten people saw it, that’s fine with me,” he adds, emphasizing that mass success was never the goal.
He’d be happy if the film played in a few dozen theaters, and even if the money never came back, he wouldn't see it as a failure. “If I never get the investment back, it’s totally fine,” he concludes, saying the most important thing is that the film was made and he can be proud of it.
But the opposite happened. The film became a hit, earning 18.4 million euros in its first weekend from a 2.5 million euro budget, more than quadrupling production costs.
On Friday, it hit #1 at the box office and ended the weekend at #2, just behind Sam Raimi’s film Send Help.
According to him, the film was still 508 thousand euros ahead of the competition, even when it briefly didn’t appear in the official rankings. For comparison, the documentary about Melania Trump had a marketing budget of 29.7 million euros, yet Iron Lung significantly surpassed it without a massive ad campaign.
