‘Iron Lung’: The movie that just broke the record for the most amount of blood ever
Nobody needs reminding what a transformational platform YouTube has become; it is a very different animal from the early days of babies biting fingers and dogs running off in parks refusing to come back.
It is now the largest television broadcaster in the United States, and on it, some creative folk are doing some very interesting things indeed. One of those people is Mark Fischbach, or Markiplier as he’s known online, who has just directed a horror film that is changing everything.
Fischbach has been making a fortune out of YouTube for several years now and was one of the first to understand just how limitless the platform could be, especially for those with dreams of making TV and movies but without the financial backing of even an independent studio.
In 2019, he went from live-streaming himself playing video games to writing and starring in his own interactive TV series on YouTube called A Heist with Markiplier, which would let viewers decide outcomes to the adventure, rather like Black Mirror with Bandersnatch the previous year. It was successful enough to warrant a sequel three years later with a larger cast, which did so well that Fischbach signed with a major Hollywood talent agency.
Around that time, it was announced that he was going to try to do something fairly outlandish, even for someone with millions of subscribers. He was going to write, direct, produce and even finance an adaptation of the cult video game Iron Lung and then release it properly, and not just online, on the platform that he knew so well.
A Kickstarter was duly founded, which smashed the $1million donation barrier in no time, with Fischbach’s fans eager to discover how he would tell the story of a prisoner in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, forced to pilot a submarine through a distant moon’s ocean of blood. Rather than look elsewhere for talent, he decided to keep his friends involved, with fellow YouTuber Jacksepticeye brought on board to score the film, something he had no experience of doing.
Eventually, the budget pulled together for the film got to $3m, allowing Fischbach to do something he felt was important, namely to beat Fede Álvarez’s record for the most amount of blood ever used in a film, which previously stood at 50,000 gallons for his 2013 hit Evil Dead (story by Sam Rami). Meanwhile, Fischbach told his subscribers that if they wanted to see the movie in their local cinemas, they needed to reach out and tell them to secure a theatrical release, something they did in their thousands.
When the blood for the movie arrived, in trucks, it was difficult to contain it all, to the point where Fischbach had to go to the hospital because he had so much fake blood in his eyes. He revealed after filming that the total amount used was 80,000 gallons, smashing the existing record by a cool margin. Last week, thanks to word-of-mouth marketing, Iron Lung was released into cinemas, and the results were nothing short of staggering.
Up against studio-funded films with advertising budgets in the tens of millions, Iron Lung brought in almost $18m in its first week alone, ironically up against Raimi’s latest Send Help and the Melania Trump documentary. While reviews from critics were mixed, it could prove to be a pivotal moment for the way movies aren’t just made but also marketed and distributed. Fischbach told THR, “This movie drew out a lot more people that have not seen a movie in about six months or so. It’s bringing people back to the theatres, and that’s a whole untapped market.”
Whether or not we are about to see a raft of YouTube directors with films in cinemas remains to be seen, but another, Chris Stuckmann, also pulled in $6m for a horror film released in partnership with distributor Neon last year.
Fischbach, meanwhile, hasn’t ruled out going the traditional route in future, adding, “I am getting some calls. I don’t want this to come across as a big middle finger to every studio, like, ‘You and me are enemies now!’ That’s not how I view anything. I know that a production deal with a studio is the dream for a lot of people.”
