YouTuber's horror movie makes $21 million in a day but he will lose half profits

Michael Slavin
2026-02-02T14:51:21.318Z
Entertainment

The film, called Iron Lung, made over $21,000,000 over the weekend

YouTuber Markiplier has made headlines after his self-financed cosmic horror Iron Lung topped the box office over the weekend.

The film cost just $3,000,000 to produce yet brought in a whopping $21,700,000 over the first weekend, quadrupling his budget and earning the top spot on Friday over Sam Raimi’s Send Help.

Iron Lung came in second over the whole weekend and the YouTuber, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, looked set to make millions in profit off the movie.

As well as being the sole financier of Iron Lung, Markiplier was the director, writer, executive producer, editor, and the star of the film.

Whilst this isn’t as simple as ‘he gets to keep the nearly $19,000,000 profit’, on most similar projects he would essentially be entitled to a huge portion of this money.

The YouTuber, who has over 38 million subscribers and 10s of millions of social media followers, will not be getting this, however, due to a unique contract clause surrounding the film.

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After the weekend’s box office numbers came in, they began showing that Iron Lung was closely competitive with Send Help, which was directed by Sam Raimi and distributed by 20th Century Entertainment, and that it was well clear of the Melania Trump documentary, which received a $35,000,000 marketing push from Prime Video.

In response, the YouTuber held an ‘Emergency Meeting’ live stream to discuss the film’s success.

Markiplier was clearly emotional during the live stream, breaking into tears at various points, and explained what would happen to the profits.

He said: “Put it this way, so I personally don’t care about the numbers other than that it’s like ‘woo, success’, I’m going to be able to give the crew a big bonus, that’s awesome.

Markiplier starred in the film, which he also directed, produced, edited, and wrote (Markiplier studios)

“I’m not a big studio so the split with the theatres is basically 50/50… It’s really cool because everyone wins and this morning, after I had learned that Iron Lung was missing from the top charts we were still number one by $600,000.”

One tweet about the film said: “People talking about how much money mark is gonna make off Iron Lung meanwhile he’s said like 5 times already that he’s gonna give the cast and crew massive bonuses for helping him make this movie a reality.”

The movie is based on an indie video game that Markiplier made famous in part with a Let’s Play series in which he played through the game.

The premise sees a convict welded into a submarine, left on a moon discovered to be filled with an ocean of blood. Following the destruction of all the planets and stars in the universe, he searches desperately for the resources he needs.

Speaking to Variety, the YouTuber said: “When you play it, you can’t help but ask what’s going on. I use these projects more as a way to cultivate my own ability… I totally get it, that can seem egotistical from an outside perspective.

The film has a 90% fan score on Rotten Tomatoes, though received a less favourable 50% critic score (Markiplier Studios)

"But if you look at it as me being a YouTuber for so long, there was no other option. There’s no one else.”

The film was originally intended to run for only one week, opening on an absolutely massive 4,164 screens worldwide, with 3,000 alone in America. Now, after the film’s huge success, it is expected that many theatres will the extend Iron Lung’s run in cinemas.

This huge number of screens for an independent film in part due to the YouTuber’s huge online following. He left a comment on a video allowing fans to request the film from their local theatres.

He went on to tell Variety: “[Fans] just went to town on it. That’s what makes me tear up. They leapt at an opportunity to help me, and that’s what I’ll never forget.

“If you can find the right people, if you can create an environment that lets people congregate in one place, they’ll move mountains just for you.

“You can never take advantage of that. It’s one of the most beautiful things on the internet, where there are terrible things happening all the time in the world, but there can still be some good.”

Iron Lung is now available to watch in theatres.