Mark Fischbach, also known as “Markiplier,” is a well known Youtube personality with over 38 million subscribers on his channel. His channel is mainly known for his gameplay videos, but he has also done short films and series on his channel such as “In Space with Markiplier” and “A Heist with Markiplier.” Recently, he released his new movie, “Iron Lung,” in around 4,000 movie theaters worldwide.
“Iron Lung” was originally a horror game, developed by David Szymanski, about a man stuck in a submarine exploring a blood ocean on an unexplored planet. Markiplier played “Iron Lung” and fell in love with it and ended up contacting Mr. Szymanski. After talking for a while, they decided to make a movie about “Iron Lung.” The movie would be 100% self-funded by Markiplier, and he would star as the lead actor, and be the director for the movie, making it an indie film.
Most Hollywood films have a budget of around $65 million dollars, while “Iron Lung” was produced with only $3 million dollars. According to Variety, “Iron Lung” made roughly $21.7 million globally on its opening weekend, multiplying its budget by over 7x. On opening night, “Iron Lung” was #1 in the box office, while at the end of the opening weekend, it was #2 in the box office.
In 2023, there were massive writer’s strikes in Hollywood, causing a big hold on multiple major productions like Sony’s “Beyond the Spider-Verse.” These strikes have since ended, but have forced Hollywood production companies to cut back on their film budgets, and cut back on their employees. According to NPR, since the strikes, there are 14% less writers in Hollywood, and up to 17% less actors in Hollywood. With Hollywood already being very selective of their actors and writers, these strikes may make many writers and actors lose their opportunities to get into these careers that they might’ve gotten into before the strikes.
While in general, this is a bad thing for most people in the Hollywood industry, I would argue that this opens up different opportunities that some people might not even realize. These strikes have cost people their jobs, but it’s also opening up opportunities for more indie films to be created. Most people assume the indie productions are low budget productions with almost no one knowing about them, but that’s not what indie films are. Indie films are characterized by the fact that they aren’t produced by a big studio, like Hollywood.
Indie films could open up doors for many people in so many more ways than people could imagine. The main current example is “Iron Lung” by Markiplier, which has shown that even people who are known off of Youtube for making goofy playthrough videos can still make a very good, and popular movie. While Markiplier’s success as an indie film might be only a rare occurrence, “Iron Lung” has set an example for things that will come in the future.
