The path forward for movie theaters now runs through YouTube, and this movie proves it

It’s well-known that movie theaters have been struggling for a while now, with people not going as much as they used to. You can blame it on the pandemic: attendance dropped in 2020 and still hasn’t recovered. You can blame it on streaming services like Netflix, which buy the rights to popular movie series like Knives Out and then do everything they can to keep them out of the cinema. You can blame Hollywood itself for prioritizing big-budget spectaculars over small or mid-sized movies that might attract a more specialized audience. There’s lot of blame to go around.

But there’s hope, too. On January 30, a movie called Iron Lung opened in theaters and has gone on to make over $30 million on a budget of $3 million, all of it provided by writer, director, and star Mark Fischbach, better known by his YouTube moniker Markiplier. Fischbach met with various Hollywood studios before funding and releasing Iron Lung himself, since they weren’t willing to work with him to make the movie he envisioned. Those execs are likely kicking themselves now, and are hopefully getting a clue about what to do next.

How Iron Lung became a hit

The movie succeeded despite Hollywood’s complete lack of interest

Iron Lung is based on a 2022 video game of the same name, about a convict (played by Markiplier in the movie) living in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the human race has been wiped out. He’s sent on a mission to explore a moon that’s almost completely covered in a sea of human blood (fun fact: Iron Lung uses more fake blood than any movie in history). He’s sealed in a small submarine and sent below.

Looking at that premise, you might understand why movie studios would balk. It’s a strange idea, based on a very niche property. “I would say there were a lot of conversations that happened,” Markipliar told The Hollywood Reporter. “I had a lot of meetings with various companies of all kinds, talking about the possibility for the movie, and most passed.”

Markiplier did get some offers, but they wouldn’t have let him have final say over things like marketing, and he’s a big enough celebrity — he has 38 million subscribers — that he could afford to go it alone, which he did. Originally, Iron Lung was going to open in two or three theaters. Markiplier pushed for 50 or 60. Ultimately it opened in over 4,000, with a lot of thanks going to Markiplier’s many fans who called their local theaters and asked that they show it. On its opening weekend it handily beat the much-discussed Melania documentary and came in second to Sam Raimi’s new film Send Help. The box office for Iron Lung is still going strong as we speak, drawing many younger viewers who conventional wisdom would have it are too busy on their phones to visit a movie theater.

Lessons learned

If a man with 38 million fans wants to make a movie with you, say yes

Credit: Markiplier Studios

Again, I understand why Hollywood executives might be wary to do business with someone like Markiplier, since he doesn’t have much experience in the movie business. Markiplier started making content for YouTube in 2012, starting with comedy sketches and moving onto Let’s Play content, specializing in horror games. How could someone like that, these executives may have asked themselves, make a movie?

But the truth is that YouTube is well on its way to becoming the dominant platform through which people consume entertainment; there may be better video platforms out there, but there are none bigger. YouTubers like Markiplier have direct access to audiences in a way that Hollywood doesn’t, and if executives fail to capitalize on interest from this growing class of home-grown celebrities, they risk letting a golden opportunity pass them by.

That is to say, rather than rejecting an offer of the kind Markiplier made, studios should have been lining up to help him. There are other success stories like his. In 2024, the horror movie Shelby Oaks — written and directed by the YouTuber Chris Stuckmann, who has far fewer subscribers than Markipliar at just over two million — made over $6 million on a budget of just around $1.4 million. MrBeast, the most popular YouTuber on the platform, is seeing huge success with his Beast Games game show on Prime Video.

What other huge creators out there have ideas that Hollywood could help them realize? If this community is properly leveraged, Hollywood could find a way to save the small and mid-budget film: by working with people whose built-in audiences will guarantee healthy returns. It seems like a low-risk, high-reward proposition.

Overcoming stigmas

Against YouTube, video games, and success

It’s also worth noting that Iron Lung is based on a video game. Between The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Fallout, and many more, video games are becoming some of the most reliable source material in Hollywood. The Iron Lung video game was a cult hit, not a blockbuster success, but even those are worth looking at with the right creative partner…if the right people are willing to take the risk.

The problem remains that, too often, they’re not. “There still is a stigma against YouTube,” Markiplier told THR. “One of the reasons why I really wanted this to work — at least some degree of success; I didn’t expect this degree — is to help move that mountain. It’s not like I’m going to topple the mountain by myself. It has to be toppled and then toppled again, until it becomes normalized. Once it becomes normalized, then it can become boring, and it’s like, ‘Of course a YouTuber can do this,’ and there’s nothing to question about it.”

That mountain is moving, but slowly. According to The Wall Street Journal, major advertisers have been very slow to allocate more funds to YouTube, despite it overtaking traditional TV and becoming the dominant force in streaming. A lot of them still consider it part of their “digital marketing” budget, while more money goes towards traditional TV campaigns that are seeing increasingly diminishing returns. Basically, everybody at the top needs to get on board with YouTube before it’s too late.

The cringe ahead

Should Hollywood wake up, smell the coffee, and start earnestly courting popular YouTubers in an attempt to revitalize their industry, not everything will go smoothly. There will probably be some awkward growing pains, some projects where the ambition of the creators outstrips their ability, some highly hyped movies that end up being duds. But there will also be some unexpected surprises that inspire the next generation of creatives. The movies will feel alive and interesting, and that’ll be worth some hiccups along the way.