The filmmaker and longtime YouTube personality tells The Hollywood Reporter about self-distributing the surprise horror hit after meeting with studio execs who “were 100 percent not about me.”Markiplier can breathe easy, now that Iron Lung — the horror movie that he wrote, directed, stars in and self-distributed — stunned Hollywood by surpassing $17 million domestically in its opening weekend and coming in just behind Sam Raimi‘s Send Help as the frame’s top title.
This feat, which included outgrossing other new features like Jason Statham’s Shelter and the much-ballyhooed Melania documentary from Amazon MGM Studios, was even more impressive considering that the YouTube content creator, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, had met with numerous studios and distributors in hopes of landing a deal for its release. Instead, Markiplier, who has posted popular video game-focused content for over a decade to his audience that now stands at 38 million subscribers, came away empty-handed, and among the rejections was an executive openly mocking the notion that the movie would find success. (More on that is below.)
