Iron Lung, the low-budget horror film written and directed by YouTuber Markiplier based on the video game of the identical name, launched big at the worldwide box office this weekend.
It earned $21.5 million globally, with a powerful $17.8 million coming from domestic theaters and $3.6 million internationally, having launched in only 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 enterprise after opening weekend.
In a comment on his YouTube channel, Markiplier posted a picture showing the domestic Sunday chart as displayed on box office website The Numbers, with Iron Lung conspicuous by its absence. “That is hilarious, they took Iron Lung off the charts,” Markiplier said. “I do not 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 pleased to find a way to do that in any respect so second place behind a legend is high quality with me. Thanks all a lot for making it such an unbelievable weekend, I could not 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 an enormous audience to steer towards Iron Lung — but he had history with the sport before he got down to adapt it. Markiplier is thought for incredibly popular Let’s Plays of indie horror games, one among which is Iron Lung itself. The 2022 submarine horror video game hit the headlines in June 2023 for seeing a lift in sales after OceanGate’s Titan submersible went missing, something Szymanski said on the time “feels so incorrect.”
Iron Lung is thrashing box office expectations in what could also be an encouraging sign for other popular YouTubers to try their hand on the movie making business. Indeed, some already are. Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin, for instance, is executive producing a brand new horror movie called Godmother.
Meanwhile, the primary movie globally this weekend is Send Help, which earned $20 million domestically and $8.1 million internationally for a worldwide weekend debut of $28.1 million. Domestically, Amazon documentary Melania generated $7.04 million from 1,778 theaters. Melania didn’t feature on this week’s global top 10 box office chart.
And for those of you keeping tabs on the large 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 may reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.