Iron Lung, the low-budget horror film written and directed by YouTuber Markiplier based on the video game of the same name, launched big at the global box office this weekend.
It earned $21.5 million globally, with an impressive $17.8 million coming from domestic theaters and $3.6 million internationally, having launched in just seven territories.
Markiplier, real name Mark Fischbach, distributed Iron Lung himself having spent a reported $3 million on production. That ensures Iron Lung is already a hugely profitable venture after opening weekend.
In a comment on his YouTube channel, Markiplier posted an image showing the domestic Sunday chart as displayed on box office website The Numbers, with Iron Lung conspicuous by its absence. “This is hilarious, they took Iron Lung off the charts,” Markiplier said. “I don’t think they liked my #1 movie in america victory laps haha.
“But really it’s all good, I fully expected Send Help to pass the movie eventually and I’m just so happy to be able to do this at all so second place behind a legend is fine with me. Thank you all so much for making it such an unbelievable weekend, I couldn’t be happier!” )The relevant page on The Numbers now shows Iron Lung in second place behind Sam Raimi’s Send Help.) David Szymanski, the indie developer of Iron Lung, celebrated the movie’s box office success in a social media post, saying simply: “what the f**k.”
— David Szymanski (@DUSKdev) January 31, 2026
With a whopping 38.2 million subscribers on YouTube, Markiplier had a huge audience to steer towards Iron Lung — but he had history with the game before he set out to adapt it. Markiplier is known for incredibly popular Let’s Plays of indie horror games, one of which is Iron Lung itself. The 2022 submarine horror video game hit the headlines in June 2023 for seeing a boost in sales after OceanGate’s Titan submersible went missing, something Szymanski said at the time “feels so wrong.”
Iron Lung is beating box office expectations in what may be an encouraging sign for other popular YouTubers to try their hand at the movie making business. Indeed, some already are. Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin, for example, is executive producing a new horror movie called Godmother.
Meanwhile, the number one movie globally this weekend is Send Help, which earned $20 million domestically and $8.1 million internationally for a global weekend debut of $28.1 million. Domestically, Amazon documentary Melania generated $7.04 million from 1,778 theaters. Melania did not feature in this week’s global top 10 box office chart.
And for those of you keeping tabs on the big hitters from Hollywood, after seven weekends, Avatar: Fire and Ash has grossed an estimated $1.4138 billion worldwide ($386.1 million domestic / $1.0277 billion international), and after 10 weekends, Zootopia 2 has grossed an estimated $1.7769 billion worldwide ($408.9 million domestic / $1.368 billion international).
Photo by Natasha Campos/Getty Images for Mark ‘Markiplier’ Fischbach.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
