Making over $51 million worldwide on a $3 million budget, the independently financed horror film “Iron Lung” has made waves in Hollywood. That 17x profit margin is more impressive than most big studio blockbusters, like the Warner Bros. period romance film “Wuthering Heights”, which is currently at a 2.6x profit margin, or the hugely promoted slasher sequel “Scream 7” from Paramount, which currently has a 3.4x profit margin.
Directed by, written by and starring Mark Fischbach, “Iron Lung” was made uniquely compared to most traditional mainstream movies and most small-budget flicks alike. Mainly known online as Markiplier, Fischbach started out as a YouTuber making videos playing and reacting to games such as “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “Lethal Company”. As he was growing his fanbase in the mid-2010s, he started branching out into bigger media projects and began acting in them, as well as writing some, including podcast-turned-TV-series “The Edge of Sleep” and television miniseries “The Drowned Man”. Fischbach worked on “Iron Lung” for over three years, including editing and distribution the film through his Markiplier Studios brand, releasing it directly into theaters earlier this year.
The movie is based on the multi-platform video game “Iron Lung” by David Szymanski, who also assisted in the screenwriting of the film adaptation. The game takes place in a dystopian world, after an event known as “the Quiet Rapture,” wherein the universe disappeared, leaving only the people who were on space stations. These survivors then search a blood ocean for resources, trying to find anything to help them. The main character is a convict who pilots a submarine named “the Iron Lung” by force to search the ocean, navigating treacherous crimson waters full of mysterious organisms.
In transferring this game to the medium of film, Markiplier worked closely with Szymanski in an attempt to keep the vision alive the way the creator saw it. Fischbach ends up expanding more on details in the game that weren’t explained fully, like the convict’s name, Simon. Despite these kinds of thoughtful and creative elements, the first steps to making the movie a reality and getting it into theaters actually started as a joke. Markiplier posted a playthrough of the game, and in its success, Szymanski posted, “What if Mark starred in a movie of ‘Iron Lung’?” This remark led to the eventual writing and filming of the adaptation, which was finished in April of 2023, leaving Fischbach to independently complete the film’s post-production as well as figure out how to bypass the studio system to get it into cinemas, not to mention promote it.
“As a supporter of independent cinema and low-budget movies, seeing a film like Iron Lung dominate the box office and the cultural conversation was extremely interesting to me,” Heights theater owner Jeremy Marder said. “I was also interested in the way it spoke directly to the younger generation. I am a former high school film teacher and found that talking to my students was the best way to find the pulse of what the next wave would be.”
Markiplier, being an indie creator, used his YouTube fanbase and platform to promote the movie, which led to Fischbach and his team spending way less money than big distribution companies but still having the same outcome of getting it out to the public eye. He also directly reached out to theaters to see if they’d screen the movie, and he ended up with 3,000+ different locations agreeing. This different path to getting into theaters is turning heads and making people wonder if it can be replicated. It’s starting to make bigger companies like Disney and Universal Pictures worry and giving small creators more hope to be able to release their films on a wider scale.
Despite a lot of anticipation for the movie, including setting the world record for most fake blood used in a movie (approximately 80,000 gallons), there have been mixed opinions on its storytelling, character development and visual effects. Some Markiplier fans really enjoyed it, being exactly what they hoped for, but others unfamiliar with the IP or YouTuber were disappointed, saying it was slow-paced and frustrating. Between muddy plotting and lightly sketched characters, it might have struck an interesting mood, but it didn’t come together as a complete work of cinema.
“It wasn’t clear what was real and what was in [the character’s] head,” Columbia Heights resident Paul Jenson said. “I think a little more explanation on what happened to the world could have been helpful [in making it less confusing].”
While Fischbach’s film is no longer in theaters, it’s expected to hit video-on-demand streaming services this spring. If you missed it, stay tuned and dive in to see if it works for you…if you dare.
