Recently, you may have been aware that the wife of the Annoying Orange had a documentary released about her. Melania was released into cinemas and has largely been accepted as about as far as cinema has ever been from art – as well as a major failure outside of the United States. But I couldn’t help noticing one social media post that stated, “Melania’s movie has been outsold by a YOUTUBER!”. And this attitude does sum up what many people feel about Markiplier’s movie Iron Lung.
For many, Mark Edward Fischbach is merely a YouTuber – and let’s not mince our words, he is, first and foremost, a YouTuber. He made his name as a YouTuber and most of his work remains YouTube videos. But it is obvious to see that while he is happy being a YouTuber, he likes to pursue other ventures as well. But for reasons that I do not understand, many people feel that YouTubers should “stick to YouTube”. Sure, reality TV stars can become actors, musicians and presenters, but YouTubers are seemingly not allowed to do that. Mark has tried other projects in the “YouTube sphere”, including his podcast Distractable, as well as Unus Annus, a YouTube project where Fischbach, alongside fellow YouTuber Ethan Nestor, created videos over the course of a single year, before deleting the entire channel.
But Fischbach certainly has an interest in acting and filmmaking. In 2022, he created Markiplier in North Korea, a documentary into his mother’s experiences as a North Korean refugee. In 2024, he starred in Amazon Prime’s The Edge of Sleep, a series that he was also executive producer on. That’s not to mention that Fischbach is an Emmy nominated filmmaker for his inventive YouTube experience Markiplier in Space. But Fischbach was very critical of the press at the Emmys event, where he felt totally ignored, despite being nominated.
While I, like many others, potentially put this down to Fischbach’s ego being bruised by the lack of attention, the treatment of his latest project Iron Lung could support his opinion that the traditional press prefers to ignore online creators. While Iron Lung could’ve been a disaster of Garth Marenghi proportions, especially with Mark being ‘writer, director, plus actor,’ the movie actually has been a huge success. The film landed 2nd during its first week on release in the USA, narrowly missing out on the No. 1 slot, which was taken by Sam Raimi’s Send Help. Despite missing out on the top spot, Iron Lung’s success might be greater than Send Help’s.
Iron Lung had a tiny budget; a total of $3 million vs Send Help’s $40 million, meaning that Iron Lung has already smashed through its budget, and despite being in the top spot, Send Help still hasn’t made its budget back as of writing. And that’s where I decided to look deeper at the attention that Iron Lung is getting. Iron Lung, for a small independent movie, has had one hell of a wide release. For instance, it was shown right here at my cinema in ‘middle-of-nowhere, Wales’. So, despite its small stature, Mark Fischbach and the team behind Iron Lung have done an amazing job of getting the movie into cinemas.
But the mainstream press has done their best to avert their gaze from Iron Lung. A movie which only got a small release window still managed to land at No. 4 in the UK box office. Despite the success, little of the traditional press gave Iron Lung much attention. On Rotten Tomatoes, there were no reviews from any major outlets for Iron Lung. During its first week of release (Iron Lung is getting shown for less than a week in most cinemas) there were only four reviews from mainstream sources — that’s less than the niche Australian movie Kangaroo which released that same week, which landed at No. 12.
Iron Lung’s success cannot be attributed to Markiplier’s fans either. Yes, he is one of the biggest YouTubers on the platform, but with the movie taking more than $21 million at time of writing, there’s got to be something more to it than just fanboys. Hard work and good word of mouth have aided Iron Lung, which has an advertising budget of almost zero, much less than pretty much every movie on the USA box office top 10, and should be commended for the success they have managed to achieve.
That’s not to say Iron Lung is perfect, or even ‘good’. The movie has received mixed reviews generally, with plenty praising the acting, look and directing of the picture, but many reviews citing the bloated runtime and slow pace. Despite the negatives, Hollywood and co cannot ignore Mark Fischbach and Iron Lung. They’ve proved that smaller movies with leaner budgets can make big successes. With the movie industry facing a severe decline, major companies can no longer rely on multi-hundred-million-pound budgets and $1 billion box offices.
Iron Lung’s success is greater than many expected — more than Markiplier probably expected too — and while modern Hollywood institutions, the mainstream press and co. all seem to want to pretend this movie doesn’t exist, Iron Lung has become a movie that they simply cannot ignore.
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