Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about how the YouTuber Mark Fischbach, more popularly known as "Markiplier," released a movie in theaters called Iron Lung to considerable success.
And it's not a success that Hollywood is taking lightly. In fact, while Iron Lung was competing with whatever Disney was limping to the barn with this month, Fischbach's film was taken off the top box office charts.
Hollywood’s out here trying to screw Markiplier it seems.
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) February 2, 2026
He embarrassed them and now they’re acting like brats.
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Read: A YouTuber Just Put Hollywood on Notice With a Successful Self-Financed Movie
There does seem to be a nasty attitude toward YouTubers from the Hollywood elite, especially when they style all over them on the big stage. That disdain bleeds through in the reporting about Iron Lung from various outlets.
Business Insider, for instance, mentioned Fischbach's 38 million subscribers on YouTube:
Fischbach, meanwhile, just used his YouTube presence to push the movie and asked fans to call and email theater owners to convince them to show it. That eventually got the movie onto about 4,000 screens worldwide and led to an estimated 1.9 million in ticket sales.
Slate said much the same:
He tapped into his network of fans, many of whom apparently work at movie theaters, and who vouched for the film to their managers. This is one of the rosier byproducts of his years cultivating a relationship with followers through videos that are usually—though not always—about gaming.
IndieWire also brought it up:
With 38 million fans and a decade-plus runway, this model is no one’s idea of plug-and-play. He even said that in the three years it took him to make Iron Lung, he might have earned more by focusing on his other revenue streams.
But I think pretty much everyone is missing the point of why these 38 million fans showed up and showed out.
If social media followers equaled success, then every movie, every television show, and every song released by a celebrity with even a little bit of pull would be a knock out of the park in terms of financial success.
But that's not the case. Even beloved celebrities see their movies crash and burn. I love Chris Pratt as both a person and an actor, but I wasn't exactly jumping out of my seat to go watch his latest film, Mercy. Sydney Sweeney has become something of a meme online, especially on the center/center-right community, but how many people actually paid to go see The Housemaid in theaters?
Fischbach didn't just tell his 38 million fans to go and act to get his movie out and successful. Again, celebrities have millions of followers on social media and give out more or less the same message, and often to no avail.
What Fischbach did was give the audience a reason to trust him with the product.
Iron Lung is an indie video game that has a loyal fanbase. The game is actually limited in terms of what you can do with it, and even the graphics look like something out of a PlayStation 2 era game. However, the claustrophobia of being inside this little submersible in an ocean that is entirely made of blood, while something massive lurks outside it that you can't see, is terrifying. Moreover, the fact that your only window to the outside world is an X-ray camera that can only take still photos adds to the haunting creepiness.
What the game lacks in overt activity and stellar graphics, it makes up for in atmosphere and, interestingly, a deep lore that, like most cosmic horror stories, implies that what you're experiencing is but a small slice of what's going on, and what's going on is something that would break your mind if you fully understood it.
So it is that the game developed a fanbase that Fischbach became a part of after playing the game himself and diving into the deeper things about it over the course of time. He was so inspired by the game that he made a movie about it, but it was the love of the game that people truly hopped to. Not just their own love for it, but Fischbach's admiration and loyalty to it.
They knew he was going to make something loyal to the source material, have respect for the universe of Iron Lung, and possibly even add some lore to it, which he was able to do because he brought on the game's creator to help him write it.
Faithfulness and trust mixed with fandom loyalty, but the film wouldn't have been the success it was without these elements mixing together. Hollywood has largely lost the trust of the people, so when they say they're going to adapt something to the screen, you hear more groans and sighs than excited talk. They've taught us that they will likely ruin it because some producer, director, or studio head wanted to "make it their own."
Fischbach understood that this wasn't his own. This was a project for everyone who loves Iron Lung, for people who love good cosmic horror, and even his own fans. It wasn't about him, and that seems to be a concept Hollywood can't wrap its head around.
