The thing I find funny about YouTube is that it's consistently embarrassing major studios without even trying. It's a platform utilized by common, everyday people to utilize their talents and artistry to create entertainment for regular people to flock to and enjoy. Every single day of the week, the major studios in the entertainment industry will release a movie or television show that may attract several million viewers, and every single day of the week, some dude will upload a video that will attract twice that number of eyeballs with hardly any budget and absolutely no marketing.
And then, just to rub it in, a YouTuber will randomly step onto the main stage where Disney, Warner Bros, and Netflix dance, and proceed to release something that embarrasses these studios further.
If you haven't heard of Mark Fischbach, you've probably heard him by his online name, Markiplier. He's a gamer on YouTube that your kids or grandkids probably know and are a fan of. He's been something of a YouTube gaming staple for years and has generated quite a loyal fandom. He's often known for playing scary video games and posting his gameplay to YouTube, but one game in particular got his attention so much that Fischbach had to adapt it into a movie.
The game is called Iron Lung, and it's an indie horror game that, on the surface, is creepy and unsettling. You pilot around what is effectively an iron submarine in a sea of blood, where you're tasked with finding points of interest and photographing them. The game always ends with your death as one of the creatures that lurks in this sea destroys your ship and eats you. However, as both Fischbach and fans of the game know, the story goes much, much deeper and is far more cosmic than what's on the surface.
As it turns out, Iron Lung's creator, David Szymanski, is a Christian, and his horror game appears to be something based on passages from the book of Revelation. The more clues you look into during the game, the more you start to piece together that the events that led up to it mimic those in the final book of the Bible, but obviously with certain liberties taken.
Fischbach, with direct guidance and help from Szymanski, decided to create a movie that wouldn't appear on your television from YouTube or on a streaming service, but would hit theaters and compete with major movie releases from major studios. Moreover, the entire thing would be self-financed by Fischbach.
The result? According to Variety, the film debuted at number two in North America, garnering nearly $18 million in its opening weekend, and that's just domestically. What's more, the Iron Lung film was competing with a Disney release:
“Iron Lung” also earned $3 million internationally for a global tally of $21.7 million. This opening weekend is notable because “Iron Lung” wasn’t far behind a major release from Disney — Sam Raimi’s thriller “Send Help,” which launched to $30 million — but without mainstream resources. Markiplier (whose real name is Mark Fischbach) self-financed and distributed “Iron Lung,” which reportedly cost $3 million to produce. He also wrote, directed and stars in the film, a post-apocalyptic video game adaptation about a fugitive who has to scavenge natural resources in an ocean of blood after a rapture.
Fischbach tearfully took to YouTube to express both his surprise and gratefulness that the film did so well:
In his video, he mentions that he was having a conversation with a film student who told him that his success gave him the confidence to try to forge his own path without major studios, and in a world where YouTube exists, this is a scary situation for Hollywood.
As Variety noted, the film only cost $3 million to make, which Fischbach had on hand because of his successful YouTube career. There was more or less no marketing for it, with the only ads for it effectively being the trailer. The film was carried purely on hype from the communities around Iron Lung and Markiplier.
For at least one weekend, a YouTuber beat Disney at the game it's best at. Some guy who sits in a room with a camera and a chair and plays video games used the money he got from that to create a film that was released in theaters and showed everyone that you don't have to have the backing of the corporate gatekeepers to have a successful film.
Other films are going to earn higher box office than Fischbach at the theaters, but no matter what, Iron Lung wins as the movie of January. If I'm Hollywood executive right now, I'm not taking this lightly, as this is probably another pebble that will start an avalanche that will eventually phase out the old way.
And funnily enough, Markiplier isn't even the first to do this.
