How Markiplier’s $50M Movie Changed Hollywood Forever

**Colin** (0:00)
How a YouTuber's self-financed horror film became a surprise hit.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
Iron Lung is the number one movie in America!

**Colin** (0:06)
But if you know anything about Markiplier, this is probably not a surprise.

**Samir** (0:10)
His indie horror film Iron Lung just made history.

**Markiplier** (0:12)
We need to talk about how Markiplier's independent horror film could change Hollywood. In the case of Iron Lung, it is doing something very unusual. There's a f***ing unicorn out there. Regal has picked it up, Cinemark has picked it up, AMC has picked it up. Pretty much every major movie chain that you know of in the United States has picked it up. Oh, man. Thank you, everybody, so much for watching.

**Samir** (0:33)
At the time of this recording, it has grossed $48 million with a reported budget of around $3 million. And it's not just because he has 38 million YouTube subscribers. There's so much more to it than that.

**Colin** (0:44)
So if you work in Hollywood and you read this headline, you might make an assumption that you should just find a YouTuber with a big audience and make a movie with them, and that'll drive similar results. But that's just not the case at all. So as we looked into this story, we broke down three reasons why this movie was such a success.

**Samir** (1:01)
We also went to see the movie earlier today.

**Colin** (1:03)
In the rain. You're welcome, Mark. Yeah.

**Samir** (1:05)
You know how hard it is in Los Angeles to go across the city in the rain? It was worth it.

**Colin** (1:10)
It was worth it, Mark. Great movie. All right, we're going to tell you what Markiplier's historic movie means for creators. Let's get into it.
I actually don't know the story of how this came together. I am not part of Markiplier's community. I don't know how the movie came together.

**Samir** (1:29)
Yeah, I also am not a part of the community, but I have been fascinated by this story. The last three or four days, I've just been reading every article I can find. I've been listening to very long podcasts about this, and I've tried to distill the most interesting points here for you. First off, for anyone who does not know Markiplier, I would imagine if you spend any time on YouTube, you do know him. He is one of the legends of the platform. He started out in 2012 primarily as part of the Let's Play genre. So very long form videos playing video games.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:00)
Hello everybody and welcome to Let's Play Skyrim. Okay, I'm not going to do that ever again.

**Samir** (2:07)
Initially, those gameplay videos were split up into sections. He posts upwards of 10 videos a day, but now they are much longer and he's playing a game and he's joking around. It's very raw and authentic. It's like similar, I guess, to a long-form podcast. You're getting the real version of him. He's always been based in indie horror. He's had a lot of breakout hits, whether it was Amnesia in the beginning. I'm sure you're more familiar with Five Nights at Freddy's. FNAF? FNAF. That was a major hit for him as well. 2022, he plays indie horror game Iron Lung and I want to play for you the beginning of the video.

**Markiplier** (2:41)
My name is Markiplier. Welcome to Iron Lung. Every known star-inhabitable planet vanished, leaving only those who were on space stations or starships. This event became known as the Quiet Rapture. You are a convict tasked with exploring this anomaly in a makeshift submarine nicknamed the Iron Lung. It was not designed for this depth, so you will be welded inside and a forward window will be closed. There is no time for training.

**Colin** (3:05)
It's a good story.

**Samir** (3:05)
It's a good story, and he's the right voice for this story.

**Colin** (3:09)
Yeah, totally.

**Samir** (3:10)
He just feels cinematic, even when you watch him set up the story of the game.

**Colin** (3:14)
Yeah.

**Samir** (3:15)
So this is in 22 He ends up just really falling in love with the story of the game and the world that the creator has built out. And he decides that he wants to reach out to the creator of the game. It's an indie game and the rights are up for grabs. And he gets the rights to adapt it into a film. About a year later on his channel, a teaser comes out and announcing it to his community within a year, which is pretty incredible.

**Colin** (3:37)
That's crazy.

**Samir** (3:38)
Later that year in 2023, we get the second teaser. And sometime after that is when he starts the conversation about theaters. He knew that this was something that was meant for theaters. His thought was 50 to 60 theaters. He partners with a distribution company called Centurion. Centurion, the distributor says, why don't we start with three theaters? And he says to them, that would be disrespectful to my audience. I have 38 million people. And if I do this, 99%, 99.9 will not be able to take part in this. But it's in December of 2025 that the official trailer is released. That's when tickets go on sale. And this is when we see the real push begin from his audience. They end up starting a bit of a grassroots campaign to get this movie into more theaters. And Markiplier leaves a comment on that teaser trailer on YouTube.