How much did Iron Lung make? Markiplier movie scores huge box office opening weekend

Markiplier’s horror movie Iron Lung managed a huge opening weekend at the US box office, outgrossing its budget many times over.

It was as big weekend for horror at the US box office, with Sam Raimi returning to his favorite genre with the critically acclaimed Send Help.

But it had competition for the top spot in the shape of Markiplier’s Iron Lung, which didn’t have the might of 20th Century Studio’s marketing team behind it, nor the star power of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.

Instead, the film stars the popular YouTuber – real name Mark Fischback – who also wrote, directed, and edited Iron Lung, and the resulting movie has defied expectations by opening at Number 2 in the US.

How much did Markiplier’s Iron Lung make?

Markiplier’s Iron Lung grossed $17.8 million from 3,015 cinemas over the weekend, just behind Send Help, which opened at Number 1 with a $20 million haul from 3,475 North American locations.

Iron Lung has a reported budget of $3 million, and with new movies traditionally needing to make around 2.5 times their original budget to break even, Iron Lung is already in profit.

That 2.5 figure is due to additional costs such as marketing, advertising, fees to exhibitors, and taxes. But with Markiplier effectively self-distributing the movie, and using a grass-roots campaign that saw his fans helping to actually get the film in their local theaters, that profit level might be even higher than expected.

The film has achieved just a 50% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes (at the time of writing), but Iron Lung’s audience score is much higher – currently 89% – so expect word-of-mouth to be strong, and potentially have a knock-on effect to the success of the film this week.

According to exit polls (as reported by Variety), 60% of that opening weekend audience was male and 85% were between 18 and 34 years old. Meanwhile, 71% cited “an actor in the lead role” as their main reason for wanting to see the film.