A YouTuber's $3M Movie Nearly Beat Disney's $40M Thriller at the Box Office (theatlantic.com)
- Reference: 0180812706
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/02/17/1825211/a-youtubers-3m-movie-nearly-beat-disneys-40m-thriller-at-the-box-office
- Source link: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/02/iron-lung-markiplier-youtuber-movie-review/686020/
Iron Lung, a 127-minute sci-fi adaptation of a video game Fischbach wrote, directed, starred in, and edited himself, opened to $18.3 million in its first weekend and has since doubled that figure worldwide in just two weeks, nearly matching the $19.1 million debut of Send Help, a $40 million thriller from Disney-owned 20th Century Studios. Fischbach declined deals from traditional distributors and instead spent months booking theaters privately, encouraging fans to reserve tickets online; when prospective viewers found the film wasn't screening in their city, they called local cinemas to request it, eventually landing Iron Lung on more than 3,000 screens across North America -- all without a single paid media campaign.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/02/iron-lung-markiplier-youtuber-movie-review/686020/
it helps that's not a bad movie (Score:2)
despite being not being a great film, per se, AV Club seemed to very much appreciate it's DIY ethos and laudable handicraft
[1]https://www.avclub.com/iron-lu... [avclub.com]
[1] https://www.avclub.com/iron-lung-review
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Highly likely the Disney one is not great either...
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well yes, my point is its easier to award merit - and appreciate - a film that tries despite limited resources and fails to be great vs a company like disney that has all the resources in the world
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Send Help is directed by Sam Raimi [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Raimi
The Blair Witch Project (Score:2)
The highest budget to revenue ratio for a movie that I'm aware of was The Blair Witch Project back in the late 1990s. That was a six figure budget that made $250 million.
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It's also infinitely more impressive given it didn't rely on an existing network of fans to survive.
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Yea but they had to rely on selling the film to a established studio to get it out to theaters and market the film. These guys have managed to get into over 4000 theaters (going off of recent numbers) internationally with no distribution partner.
Yeah, but what about the real competition? (Score:1)
Yeah, but how did they fare against the real box-office smash of early 2026: "Melania"?
But it's not youtube anymore, is it? (Score:2)
When youtube started it sic. appeared to be a place for the masses, which many do not have one million Dollars.
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He didn't start with one million dollars. Some people make a decent living off Youtube, many are able to sustain companies, pay staff and editors, etc. That's still Youtube.
Not terribly surprising (Score:2)
DYI anything is usually an order of magnitude cheaper than a professional production.
Most movies these days seem to spend as much money promoting the movie than they spent producing the movie. Here promotion was free to him. So that's a factor 2 right there.
DIY amateur does not mean it's bad. In video games, we've seen that story unfold a hundred times in the last 20 years.
New American Revolutionaries take note... (Score:2)
This is how you change the system.
Just don't play their game by their rules.
Make something, sell it yourself; no middlemen.
Dude he's a YouTuber (Score:5, Insightful)
A long-standing YouTuber who used his existing audience to promote the movie. He is part of the system. If he did anything that was contrary to or in opposition to the system he would get demonetized and shadowbanned.
We saw this with Patrick Boyle where he did a video about Jeffrey Epstein's finances that got demonetized without any explanation why. As soon as it was demonetized the views stopped coming in because unless you were subscribed to the channel you didn't see the video. Demonetized videos do not get promoted by YouTube.
You can change the system from within using voting, at least while you're still a democracy. But you're not going to get any miracles out of somebody else's platform. Although Checkmate Lincolnites did okay with their video.
The hard part is in a post AI world you're competing with so much slop for attention. The Old guard have built-in audiences, even guys who have been posting for five or six years. But these days it's really hard to find anything new.
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Hate to break it to you, but you can't change the system in a democracy using voting. You can only pull the levers and push the buttons. You can't change the machine's inner workings.
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You can't change a democracy by just voting: you absolutely need good elected representatives also, and much of what determines who represents you is the work of political machination, not votes.
That being said, throughout history the only way people have ever "changed the machine's inner workings" is through revolution. There's been two types: violent revolution, and democratic revolution (ie. a combination of elected representatives and voters working to fundamentally change "the machine").
To claim other
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If I'm anything, I'm profound.
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This isn't a "Youtube" thing gramp's (or is it grandma now?) it's a *in-theater* movie and has nothing to do with Youtube other than he told his subs to go watch it.
If you had read the article you would have understood he took no studio money or media campaign to role it out and called theater chains himself to get it out to audiences.
Re: Dude he's a YouTuber (Score:1)
you know, artists don't actually hate having enough money or support to make a movie. they hate selling out, and he never sold out. He financed it himself and distributed it himself so he would owe anything to anyone who could then pressure him to compromise on his vision. in fact, the only "compromise" on his vision he ever talked about making was to bring the game's original creator on as a consultant because he believed it was what the story deserved. None of this is Hollywood's way. ignoring his artisti
Re:New American Revolutionaries take note... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a Markiplier fanboy, but being shocked that a guy who has "an audience of more than 38 million subscribers" (REALLY??) can make his money back is comical. Of course he has. He'd have made even more money if even just 1/4 of his fans saw his movie and they haven't, it's far less than that.
"This is how you change the system." ... I work in VFX and I tell every aspiring student and hobbyist this: use your iPhone. Everyone who wants to change the system or break down walls... yeah yeah, you have everything you need in your pocket today. Publishing to YouTube will get your the feedback you need to progress. You don't need AI to get rid of gatekeepers or whatever, you just need to try. 99% of the people use the camera, the location, or something to else difficult to attain to justify how lazy they are.
Laziness is the biggest gatekeeper of them all. Markiplier has never been lazy. The guy gave himself a heart attack at 20 or something from working too hard, yeeesh.
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I think the bigger accomplishment here is getting a wide release without a traditional distribution studio being involved.
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You forgot the part where you spend over a decade building name recognition and a devoted following who will help make your project a success for the memes alone.
No shade at Markiplier but let's not delude ourselves that any random dude can get the same results; most indie films run at a negative, but in terms of successful indie films Iron Lung is pretty far down the list... though it's not been out that long.
The real lesson here is to find a way to generate hype while keeping budgets low, and it doesn't r
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He's a YouTuber. He only got there because he's part of the system.
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People can use the system to their advantage and still not be 100% sucked in.
Yes, but (Score:2)
The pooled money interests will lobby congress for laws which protect the entrenched players. They can't shut you down for free speech, but it might become difficult to release your self-created movie to the movie theaters or online venues like Youtube. They will also file frivolous lawsuits in order to wear you down. Their survival is at stake, and they're going to use every trick in the book to protect their business model.
This is the problem with a business-state nexus. The state and business is too tig