Markiplier is Changing the Game with ‘Iron Lung’ [Cover Story]

It’s no secret Hollywood has a history of gatekeeping. And while it may have taken over a decade to happen, it seems like we’re finally seeing the next wave of creatives breakthrough by force. YouTubers, influencers, and independent digital creators are emerging into the mainstream on their own terms, without help from old-hat forces. Mark Edward Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, is now the most important example of this democratization of filmmaking.

With zero traditional support or backing, his debut film, Iron Lung, a horror film based on David Szymanski’s indie horror game, just fully disrupted the industry by making over $20 million at the box office, entirely on his own terms. The win was a seismic event and felt industry-wide this past weekend.

Before his game-changing box-office win, I sat down with the digital juggernaut for the following February 2026 digital cover story interview, all about his new film and unique positioning within an industry that’s prone to acting out of fear.

Markiplier’s Ladder

First with RackaRacka’s massive wins with both Talk To Me and Bring Her Back, then Curry Barker’s massive TIFF sale for his game-changing horror film Obsession, I ask Fischbach if he’s felt any positive shift in the perception of YouTubers after some of his peers found mainstream success in horror cinema.

“Less than you’d think,” he tells me. “It’s hard to gauge because being kind of outside in the first place… it’s probably now something that they can’t ignore.“

He then shares an eye-opening example of how creators like him are treated by the industry.

“I was nominated for an Emmy a little while back. I was at the red carpet—I notoriously hate red carpets—but the publications that were there didn’t want to talk to me, and I’m fine with that. If you don’t want to talk to me, I’m not going to make you talk to me. But in my mind, it’s strange because if you put out a video with me in it, it’s going to be good for you. Not just like an ego trip.”

There’s a pause.

“I have 38 million subscribers,” he tells me plainly, without ego, just to inform further, adding, “It’s a bad business decision to not want to do it just because I’m a YouTuber and they knew who I was. One of my publicists was there at the time, and they were kind of surprised at the responses because people were just like, ‘No, we don’t want to talk to that.’ I’ve had that on other podcasts where they’re like, ‘I don’t want to talk to that YouTuber,’ but now it’s getting to the point where I think they can’t really ignore it.”

Iron Lung

Iron Lung, Szymanski’s game and Markiplier’s subsequent film, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, concerns a convict named Simon (Fischbach) who is forced to pilot a submarine through a desolate moon’s ocean of blood after an event known as the Quiet Rapture caused the majority of humanity, and all stars, to disappear without warning.

When I ask if the game is known for being especially scary, he pauses, then says:

“What this game does really well is it puts a unique perspective on a horror environment that people are not used to. People have seen a lot of horror movies, but being isolated with such a limited view in such a bizarre environment, in a submarine in an ocean of blood, there’s all these questions popping up and you don’t know what’s outside.

It’s very audio-based. It’s scary for sure, and a lot of people probably find it one of their scariest games, but it’s interesting. That’s kind of what appealed to me.”

There Will Be Blood

The film has been making headlines for breaking records. But there’s only one right now, on paper, that he’s ready to accept.

“The record I know of right now is blood. Most fake blood,” he says. “And that one is, I mean, if you’ve seen it, it’s pretty obvious. Look, it’s an ocean of blood. There’s no way it’s not going to have the record. But it was still a logistics hurdle. That much blood, especially because the set was up on a motion control rig, had weight considerations. I’m a former engineer, so I suddenly had to go back to my days of engineering and thinking about material properties.”

The details are hard to fathom…

“The liquid weight alone, even partially full, just a foot and a half, was an extra 9,000 pounds. It’s enormous. It boggles the mind. That’s maybe a thousand gallons to that point. When you start to go above that, you can’t really move it much because if you move it too much, it’ll tsunami out the walls of the set. It’ll literally smash because it’s 10,000 pounds of weight hitting the side of the wall. It’ll break anything.”

Evil Dead

Having not done my homework on the subject, I have to ask what the previous record holder was, wrongly assuming it was The Shining.

“It’s Evil Dead,” he tells me, without hesitating. “They say it’s from that blood rain scene. And I’m not throwing shade on them, but they don’t have a verifiable number for that 50,000 gallons someone put out. I think it’s one of those things where someone said it and no one denied it. I know what dealing with that quantity of blood is.

We had an industrial dumpster that we used for dunking things in for certain scenes. We couldn’t realistically flood it with me in it, so we had to sink things sometimes. That thing was about 8,000 or 9,000 gallons of blood when it was full. I believe we ordered truckloads of blood. You had semi-trailers with giant, farm-sized industrial chemical containers sloshing down the highway.”

Five Nights at Freddy’s

When I ask Fischbach which horror movie IP would be a dream for him to be part of, he skirts a bit, but Five Nights at Freddy’s sits at the center of it all.

“It was in the lead-up to that. I was supposed to be in it and I wasn’t,” he says of the recent Blumhouse sequel, the gigantic holiday success that even outperformed the first film.

So why wasn’t he?

“Because I was working on this, so I just couldn’t spare any time. I was supposed to be the guy that died in the first scene in part two. But they were filming at the same time we were filming this, so I couldn’t leave set to do that.”

Event Horizon

When asked which horror movie ruined his childhood, the answer seems easy. “Event Horizon stuck with me as a horror. Yeah, that gave me nightmares for a long time. A lot of what I’ve done always kind of goes back to those aesthetics. When I did In Space with Markiplier, my last project, the ship design was kind of like Event Horizon. I think about it a lot”

I take the chance to push the idea of a reboot, maybe one he could tackle. He’s got the resume for it. He sees me coming and doesn’t take the bait, saying of a potential reboot:

“It would be cool, but the performances, the set design, the aesthetics are so good. I feel like just a modern reedit for it would be great.”

The Mortuary Assistant

With The Mortuary Assistant movie coming up next in the indie horror game-to-film pipeline, I’m personally curious if it’s one he’s excited about it.

“It was scary. I think it was very good,” he says of the DreadXP game. “I’m interested to see what it’s going to be as a movie. I think it’s a good concept. It’s a very enclosed space. There are a lot of good scares in the game. Even if they just replicated those in the movie, that would work really well. It’s a compelling, haunting kind of story. There’s a lot to it. And the nature of mortuaries anyway, the embalming process. One of the cool things about the game was walking through a semi-realistic version of what you would need to do to prepare a body.”

Iron Lung is in theaters now. You can get your tickets for it here.

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