Mark Fischbach, the YouTuber known as Markiplier, has just turned Hollywood on its ear with the release of his debut film, "Iron Lung," an adaptation of the 2022 sci-fi horror game of the same name.
Fischbach announced in 2023 that he planned to adapt the game into a movie and put up the $3 million needed to finance the project. He wrote, directed, and edited the movie.
Iron Lung. Coming soon to theaters. pic.twitter.com/vxP28YC9Vd
— Mark (@markiplier) October 14, 2023
He also stars in the film as Simon, a convict in a dystopian future where the stars and many planets have vanished. To earn his freedom, Simon is tasked with exploring a moon covered in an ocean of blood using the titular submarine.
The craft is crude and rundown, and Simon is forced to be welded shut inside the windowless vessel, relying on an outside camera and a rudimentary navigation system to complete his mission.
First poster for Markiplier’s directorial debut ‘IRON LUNG’
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) December 5, 2025
The film will have a theatrical rollout starting on January 30 with approx 50-100 theaters. pic.twitter.com/cfQQzDTBbJ
I saw "Iron Lung" last night, and it harkens back to a time when independent filmmakers knew how to take risks and make movies. It was better than 95 percent of the offerings Hollywood puts out today. Fischbach knows how to read a line and how to emote through his facial expressions, which was a pleasant surprise, given that his background is in engineering and he stumbled on his impressive YouTube career unintentionally. He carries the film largely on his own — think "Castaway" with Sam Rami levels of blood — and the other characters are on screen for minutes, and then relegated to voices. The sound design is really well done and necessary to carry a film limited by its setting. The special effects belie the low budget and are more practical than CGI. I'd really like to see a behind-the-scense documetary about the making of this movie.
And while the film is rated R, mostly for language and gore, the bloodshed is on par with the absurdities of "Evil Dead" as opposed to other graphic body horror flicks. The one problem is the runtime. Clocking in at just over two hours, the film could have benefited from trimming 20 to 25 minutes to tighten it up, especially from the second half, which lagged a little bit before the finale. It also left open the door to a sequel, and while I'd like to see more films from Fischbach, we need to move away from creating cinematic universes and sequels. Sometimes, a film just needs to be a one-and-done.
Beyond being a solid, if flawed, debut for a YouTuber, the movie — and its success — should be a massive wake-up call to Hollywood.
Made on that $3 million budget and marketed largely through Markiplier's presence on YouTube, the film has grossed more than $21 million at the box office to date. The rule of thumb for a movie to turn a profit is that it must make three times its budget, including marketing. If we're generous and assume an additional $1.5 million for marketing, "Iron Lung" needed to bring in $13.5 million to be considered a success. It's done that, and more. Forbes reported "Iron Lung" brought in $17.8 million over the last weekend, giving the Hollywood-produced "Send Help," which earned $20 million, a run for its money. Even then, "Send Help" has a reported budget of $40 million, so it lags behind the indie film's success.
Hollywood is keen to throw good money after bad these days, and it continues to finance woke, disappointing, and tired movies. They've taken beloved IPs like "Star Wars" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and driven them into the ground. They've remade classics like "Snow White" for the "Modern Audiences" that don't exist. They're even putting out "Toy Story 5," resurrecting a franchise that should have ended with the third installment, which was almost a perfect send-off for those characters. All that translates into box office bombs, and while it has to hurt the studio's bottom line, they don't seem to care, because they keep doing it. What's more concerning is the damage such trash does to movie theaters, which have been struggling since COVID to get butts in the seats as streaming remains appealing and movie quality continues to decline.
As if that wasn't frustrating enough, they cast and promote actresses and actors who never pass up a chance to politicize everything. Rachel Zegler did that with "Snow White," making it one of the many reasons that movie flopped harder than a fish on dry land. They also tried to turn James Gunn's "Superman" into a treatise on immigration. It, too, flopped. One of the best features of "Iron Lung" is that I have no clue what Fischbach's politics are, even though I can assume he's left of me. I don't know where he stands on abortion, Israel, or Trump. Could I look up his beliefs? Yeah. But he doesn't offer them publicly, and I like it that way. So do other moviegoers who pay $15 for a ticket and $12 for popcorn to escape the endless deluge of political garbage, rather than have it force-fed to them on the big screen.
Fischbach took a story he liked and turned it into something that actual audiences want to watch, while respecting the source material. "Iron Lung" is blissfully void of any political agenda, by the way. There was no hint of "The Message," no heavy-handed allegories about Trump (looking at you, "Mickey 17") or thinly-veiled metaphors about the Current Thing. It was just a good story, honestly told, with creative techniques required to make the limited budget work.
There are lessons to be learned from "Iron Lung," if Hollywood and studios pay attention. Instead of spending tens (or hundreds) of millions on big-budget, CGI-heavy productions, with off-putting talent, put $3 million behind smaller, independent filmmakers to make low-budget movies. It's clear there's a market for it, and who wouldn't want a sevenfold return on their investment?
