Mark Edward Fischbach, better known to his 38 million YouTube subscribers as Markiplier, has always been a one-man operation. It’s why when it came to directing his first feature film, he also starred in, wrote, edited, financed and distributed it.
The movie, a claustrophobic horror video game adaptation of “Iron Lung,” is set to open Friday on a massive 4,164 screens, including 3,000 in the United States. The story is a post-apocalyptic tale in which a convict, played by Fischbach, sails an ocean of blood in a submarine in order to search for resources and discovers increasingly terrifying secrets.
Fischbach says the mystery of the game is what drove him to adapt it into a feature.
“When you play it, you can’t help but ask what’s going on,” he says. “There are very few games that I’ve played where I go into it, and I leave it saying, ‘I want to know everything about this universe. I want to know what happened. I want to know why I’m there. I want to know what I’m looking for. I want to know what got me at the end.’ I think that can be a detriment to certain games or movies where there are too many unanswered questions. I tried to work with the developer and get some of those questions answered, but still leave a sense of mystery; hopefully, people will have a good time, but leave it saying, ‘What just happened? I might need to see that again to really get an idea, or watch someone do a breakdown of it later.’ It was the right combination of that.”
That started a three-year journey in which Fischbach says he fully immersed himself in elevating his craft.
“I use these projects more as a way to cultivate my own ability,” he says. “I totally get it, that can seem egotistical from an outside perspective. But if you look at it as me being a YouTuber for so long, there was no other option. There’s no one else. For 13 years, it’s been me doing my own thing because not only is no one else really enabling me to do it, besides YouTube Originals with their things, but no one really wants to do all that. If I don’t do it, it’s not going to get done. So when it comes down to the writing and the actual starting of the process, I’ve learned over a long period of time that I have to, because if I don’t, it won’t exist.”
Fischbach filming “Iron Lung.”
Courtesy of Markiplier
Fischbach is devoted to the idea of stepping up his skill sets, as he was happy to focus on elements like acting and editing, which he’s been doing for 13 years on his horror videogame-focused YouTube channel.
“When it comes down to acting, I wanted to do it because I wanted to advance my ability as an actor,” Fischbach says. “I don’t think that I’m the greatest actor in the world and that no one else can do it. Tying back to the YouTube thing, I’ve acted in every video I’ve ever done because it’s my channel. I don’t think there’s a way forward for me to evolve who I am and be genuine outside of YouTube without taking things on. That doesn’t mean I’m going to star in everything — I can’t wait to not star in the things that I do. I want to be in the director’s seat, sit my butt down, and just tell people what to do. That sounds great. But also this is a really horrible story, and I wrote the character doing some pretty uncomfortable, messed-up things. I thought, ‘If I’m going to write this, I’ll put myself through it. I don’t really want anyone else to suffer for the sake of this, besides myself.’”
Being one of the most-watched content creators in history gave him the flexibility to self-finance his adaptation of David Szymanski’s 2022 game.
“I don’t care about making a profit on the things that I do for this, because YouTube has been very good to me,” Fischbach says. “I make a good living, and I’m able to afford to take these chances that a lot of people aren’t able to take, and I recognize that. But even if it never had any success, my personal metric is that it’s done and I’m proud of it. If only 10 people see it after that, that’s fine with me because it was never about it being the biggest success in the world. I was perfectly content if it never got past 50 theaters, which, for an independent release, is not bad. If it went to 100, I thought maybe I could get it to 200. I’d be happy with that. And then I can put it up somewhere, maybe people can rent or buy online, and that’s fine. If it never makes money back, that’s totally fine with me.”
But something unexpected happened. Fischbach wrote a comment on a video about “Iron Lung,” letting fans know they could request it from their local theater if they went and asked for it. Their drive caused a chain reaction, which led to the plus-sized opening for the self-distributed feature, which he is working on alongside Centurion Films.
“They just went to town on it,” Fischbach says. “That’s what makes me tear up. They leapt at an opportunity to help me, and that’s what I’ll never forget. That’s why I’ll always swear by YouTube and internet content creation as a platform. If you can find the right people, if you can create an environment that lets people congregate in one place, they’ll move mountains just for you. You can never take advantage of that. It’s one of the most beautiful things on the internet, where there are terrible things happening all the time in the world, but there can still be some good.”
Watch the trailer for “Iron Lung” below.
