Youtuber Markiplier’s Indie Film Iron Lung Makes Waves in Hollywood
One of Youtube’s most famous creators, Markiplier, recently released his first movie, Iron Lung, which soared to the #1 spot on the box office list.
Markiplier, otherwise known as Mark Fischbach, is one of Youtube’s longest standing creators. With over 38.3M subscribers and almost 6000 videos spanning over a decade, Markiplier has become one of the platform’s most beloved creators, and a staple in most Gen Z childhoods. He is best known for being “the king of Five Nights at Freddy’s,” Unnus Annus (where he and fellow Youtuber Ethan Nestor posted vlogs everyday for a year before deleting the channel entirely), and his other creative projects like In Space with Markiplier.
On January 30th, Markiplier’s latest project, Iron Lung, released in theatres. The movie is based on the videogame of the same name, available on the PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Iron Lung (2026) follows Simon, a convict exiled to live in a submarine-like structure (the iron lung) in an ocean of blood on a moon, after the apocalypse. Simon explores the depths of the blood ocean, created as the result of human massacre to find answers as to why the apocalypse occurred, on a mission he was never meant to survive.
Markiplier wrote, directed, produced, funded, and starred in his movie. It was made without any studio affiliations, and its marketing was mainly limited to the promotional material Markiplier posted on his Youtube channel. Despite that, Iron Lung (2026) had a budget of $3 million, with a revenue of approximately $35 million, despite only being in theatres for a week and not currently being available on any streaming services. It sat at the top of the box office during the weekend of its release, beating out high-budget Hollywood films like Melania (2026), Send Help (2026) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). However, it was unceremoniously removed from the box office list entirely just two days after release, possibly due to the Hollywood industry’s fear of a successful indie project.
The film was originally meant to release in only 60 independent US movie theatres but due to fan outcry, it ended up being released in over 4000 international theatres, available at large company theatres like AMC and Cineplex. Markiplier has a history of utilizing his massive fanbase to spread positivity, from encouraging them to play little-known indie video games, to asking them to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. While Markiplier didn’t directly ask his fans to help grow his film’s outreach, they still came together and did so out of love for the creator, and their desire to watch the film that they knew he worked hard on.
Markiplier did, however, ask his fans to participate in another charity. In honor of the blood ocean being the main setting of the movie, Markiplier teamed with Vitalant Blood Banks to have mobile donation centers stationed outside select theatres screening Iron Lung (2026). It’s hard to know exactly how many fans donated blood in honor of Markiplier’s movie, as Vitalant Blood Banks were not stationed outside of all 4000 international theaters, leading some fans to donate to the Red Cross or other such organizations. However, it was reported that donations increased significantly on the weekend of Iron Lung’s release, showing that creators with kind hearts can utilize their platforms for good.
