YouTuber Mark Fischbachbetter known as Markiplieris the man behind Iron Lungwhich earned $18.19 million at the box office last week, more than six times the film’s reported $3 million budget. The film ran around major studios at the box office, earning more than double Amazon’s $7 million brought inside with Melania movie and was a close second to Disney’s Sam Raimi-directed horror-thriller “Send Help,” which earned $19.1 million domestically.

Fischbach started YouTube in 2012. The Hawaii native was then a 22-year-old studying medical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. As she describes it publicly, after a rough patch in her last year of college—a breakup with a boyfriend, a tumor on her adrenal gland, being fired by her mom, and being fired—Fischbach set up her YouTube channel as a kind of coping mechanism. He adopted the username Markiplier where he posted inspirational “Let’s Play” videos, attempts at survival-horror video games. The channel quickly gained traction and Fischbach dropped out of college to pursue his career on YouTube, which has since become a audience of 38 million for the 36-year-old creator.

Iron Lung an indie horror film in which a convict boards a claustrophobic submarine, sailing through an ocean of blood (80,000 gallons worth of fake blood) on a distant moon. Following the film’s weekend release, Fischbach took to her YouTube channel to make a teary-eyed address to her fanbase. “Now it’s a heroic moment to show that indie filmmaking is possible,” Fischbach said.

Fischbach built his following as a one-man show. When it came time to promote his film, he stuck to the same solo script. Marketing the movie involved a guerrilla operation that began with a YouTube video in which Fischbach asked his fanbase to call local theaters to show the film. “If you want, just ask your local movie theater if they can (show it) as respectfully as you can,” Fischbach told his fans in a YouTube livestream in November. The film ended up showing in 3,015 theaters in the US and Canada, compared to 1,778 theaters showing the Melania movie.

The rise of the creator-led movie

Markiplier is the latest creator to capitalize on social media to propel him to widespread success. He follows creators like comedians in music Bo Burnham and Australian YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou who came out on social media to get success in the film industry.

Marketing experts say the film’s successful rollout could affect how studios consider marketing future films. Drew Mitchell, the US lead for the Edelman Gen Z lab, said luck He believes that film studios can start looking for creators to create a greater attraction for the audience. He said they ask, “Are there creators or individuals that we can work with both from a cast or a creative perspective? And then how do we also bring Gen Z into marketing directly?”

Mitchell noted how traditional ad campaigns failed to attract young audiences. “The traditional top-down system no longer works for gen Z,” he said. Edelman’s research shows young viewers have complaints about traditional advertising, with 58% of gen Z not trusting traditional institutions. For younger audiences, multi-million dollar ad campaigns ring hollow.

“It doesn’t really feel like a film that’s sold to audiences,” Mitchell said of “Iron Lung.” “I think it’s a small part of how a community decides there’s something worth doing, something worth paying attention to.”

In fact, audiences in general now trust influencers more than traditional ads or commercials, with 59% saying their opinion was influenced by influencers before buying from a brand, compared to only 50% saying ads or commercials played a role in their decision, according to Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer. “There’s a lot of trust and credibility with influencers,” says Timothy Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. luck. “It’s really interesting how much people trust the people they see on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram.”

For Fischbach, his YouTube origins are a point of pride. “Where I come from makes me able to do the things I can do,” he said in a livestream on Sunday. “It will continue to make me able to do the things I can do into the future.”