How a YouTuber Took His Self-Financed Movie Wide Without a Studio

It is Friday, January 30th. There's a movie opening wide this weekend on about 3,000 screens in the US and Canada that's expected to gross between $7 and $10 million. No, it's not the Melania Trump documentary. It doesn't even have a traditional studio distributor. It's called Iron Lung, and it's a low-budget adaptation of an indie horror video game. Showings were sold out weeks in advance, and overall pre-sales are at about $7 million. A number that any indie distributor would love to have. So how did this happen? After all, this is kind of the indie filmmakers dream, a DIY movie that's getting a very non-DIY style release. The director, producer, and financier of this movie is a guy named Mark Fishbach. He's more commonly known as Markiplier, an LA-based YouTube creator who makes videos about gaming, some comedy, other narrative projects, it's got a clothing brand, and most importantly, he's got 38 million YouTube subscribers who love his videos. Fishbach made Iron Lung entirely on his own, and he's self-distributing it with no paid marketing and no traditional distribution partner. He's essentially leveraging his audience into the distribution engine, and led to a wide release of this movie. How many pull that off? That's today's show. How a YouTube creator's movie got a studio style release without the studio. And is this a viable path for other up-and-coming filmmakers? I'm the ringer and puck, I'm that felony, and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Mark Fishbach, known as Markiplier, popular YouTuber, big creator economy guy, and now feature film director. Welcome. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Theatrical feature film director. We should say that. I read this story you'd participate in with IndieWire, where you were talking about your path to getting your movie into theaters. And so we got to have this guy in the show, because this is like what people talk about all the time in the business, they're like, how do we expand the canvas of people who can get their movies shown to wide audiences in theaters, make that transition from digital creator to feature film filmmaker. And you're doing it here, and not only are you doing it, but you're doing it without really the help of any of the traditional gatekeeper players in the business. And so I want you to just take us through both the development of this project iron long, and then specifically how you got this to be premiering this weekend in 2,500 theaters. The whole idea started from a video game. And so that's kind of the thing people need to understand is it came from an indie game by one developer. This guy Dave Zomanski. Yeah, Dave Zomanski is his name. And he made iron long the game, and when I played it, not played a lot of IndieWire games, this one stood out as being different. So given that it had a lot of unique facets, I was interested in what the universe was trying to be what was outside of the sub, what led, you know, that sub to be there in the first place. And all of those are the kind of elements that I was looking for to make my first feature film. So you come at this from it as a storyteller, like this is something, you know, just like you would any other material, this is something that I can do something with. Yes, yes. I could see there being more here, and I asked, I had a lot of talks after he said, okay, to making a movie out of it, I spent so much time working with him directly, which I think is another important thing about adapting is even if you have to adapt and all things need to be adapted in one form or another when they're going from one medium to another. But I think working with the developer was essential here because he was able to guide what was in the universe and what wasn't and what was he was willing to build on the universe for. So the writing process was very much me writing ideas, I would chuck it at him. He would put up the guardrails to funnel me towards what the movie should be and what kind of story it should tell and how it can be honorable to the game itself. So you get a script that you're happy with that he's happy with. You do a, what was it, a 20 something day shoot in 23, 35 day, 35 day shoot. This is a union project, SAG, low budget, what was your budget for it? I won't say specifically, it was a few million, I'll put it that. And was a self-finance or did you have an outside backer? It was all me. So a few million dollars, low budget film, and then you start to think about how you're going to get this out into the world. Yeah. So by the time I was done with it, because my issue was I ran into a problem where I was running out of time in the day, I just landed this Spotify deal for my podcast. I had this clothing company that I needed to take a lot more direct hand in. I had my YouTube channel. So basically I was working on the movie on weekends, which means that I hadn't taken the day off in the three years that I had been working on this, which was starting to make me go a little crazy. It's like a traditional filmmaker. Yeah. I know, right? So by the time it was done, it was time to start promoting it. And it happened at a time where I had just gotten married, but also we had just lost our pet, Henry, our dog just to cancer, and it was super hard to get there. So December 5th rolls round is like, okay, I'm behind on everything, but we have a plan to get in 50, maybe 60 theaters. What was that plan? That was the plan. It was 60 theaters and then see if we can bump that up to maybe 100, 200. I wanted to engage my fan base. I had a good idea that I could get in in 200. I've done a live tour before where I've sold out like 1000 seed theaters. Now it was eight years ago. So I knew that they could show up. I had the confidence of that, but then they just blew all expectations out of the water. Okay. But let's back up a little bit because there are costs involved in booking theaters. And you are self-distributing this and just so people understand, when you're distributing a movie, there's lots of things to go along with that there's marketing and there's actual booking of the theaters. And a lot of times theaters need to be cajoled into taking a movie, especially from someone that they may not know much about. So what was your process? You used this company's Centurion. How did you go about finding the company to do that and getting them to convince theaters that this is something they should take on? Still hurting is the guy that we are in contact with Bill and Sonsam. And so we talked to him and originally he wanted to just do three theaters. And this is where it's going to sound egotistical. But if you look at it from this perspective, it's not. I told him that three theaters would be insulting to my audience. And the reason for it is I have 38 million subscribers. If I say it's only in three, 99.99 percent of my audience are suddenly excluded and they're upset with that. Like a lot of other independent releases start with one or three theaters and they build from there. But because I have a built-in audience, I need to approach it from there. But that conversation is difficult when I go to a studio being like, I have 38 million subscribers. You give me my theaters. You know, they're not going to take that up my word. So I have to walk a line that respects both my audience and the expectations of the theaters. And thankfully, I have enough fans that work at theaters that can convince their managers that, hey, I know this guy. I've watched him for years. He makes good stuff. He has fans. Look, I'm one of them. And then I had other fans calling theaters. I even offered to Bill saying, I could ask my fans to show up physically at a theater and ask that way. They don't think it's fake. They know that there are people in the real area. So we had all these methods to do it. And very few of them did I need to actually do because my fans just took it away and ran with it. But it is a little bit of a chicken and egg thing because you know, you know, your fans will book pre-sales when these are available, but they've got to be available first. So did you literally convince them to say, take a chance on this and put this out that you will not be disappointed? Or did you have to kind of send a link out and then it starts selling out and then theaters, theaters, theaters. No, it was just by faith. I think that they had a mixture of people calling, which originally they thought it was bots because they would get a lot of emails and it would be kind of a template. But I said on a video, a lot of my fans are a little, you know, social anxiety. They're not good with calling. So they will ask for help and someone will be like, this is the email that I sent and they'll just, oh, good, copy, paste, I'll send that along with the email. So they're willing to help, but a lot of them don't know the specifics of how to help. So it can seem repeated. But as soon as they would get all these emails and then one theater would book the movie and then it would sell out, because they would have, all right, let's do one screen, 50 feet seats, boom, sell out. And then the theater, you know, town over, they'll be independent theaters and bill doing his magic to kind of communicate that this is happening. The other theaters go like, well, I don't want to miss out. The FOMO starts to build and then boom and other. And then I'm having a conversation with Cinemark and I've already had a conversation previously and they're like, all right, let's try it out with 30 theaters. Then regal comes in and then they put it in almost all there's right. They see the momentum. Is this before a trailer existed or was there a trailer? There was a teaser trailer when we were filming and there was an official first trailer at the end of that year. And then the final trailer on December 5th was what I released that announced that tickets were on sale. We launched the website. So you built momentum before tickets were available. So your fan base was primed for when that link dropped by tickets. Absolutely. I've been talking about this movie and people knew how much work I was putting into it because of the close relationship I have with my audience. So they knew what I was doing for years leading up to this. And it's interesting because people were like, oh, is this a template for other filmmakers who come from the creator community? And it sort of is and it isn't because it's not just about having millions and millions of followers, although that certainly is a bar you need to get to, but it's about having engaged followers. And followers that will essentially do what you tell them to do or what you suggest that they should do. Yeah. I totally understand the process studios would take to try to have a recipe for success because that's how businesses make repeatable success. They try to have a framework and do that with the creator economy, however you want to call it. There's very little framework there because it's so human. If you think about it past just the numbers that people have on their social media platforms and think of it like I do where there are people behind there. There are people that have their own emotions. And sometimes they just won't be into something no matter how much you try to convince them, no matter the relationship. So you need to be very sparing on what you ask them. And so I try to make sure that I don't ask my fan base very much very often so that when it counts, it really counts. And when I need it, it's a human connection. And that way it really is organic when it comes to the growth of it. No chocolate bars in the middle of your sentences. No, no, not often. Although you do have a clothing brand. I do have a clothing brand. I've done things where as like I've promoted my podcast, I'll create an only fans for that. That was very successful. Oh, wow. What do you do on only fans? Tasteful news. Tasteful news. Tasteful news. Not full. Not full news. Demer news. Exactly. It's like the sports illustrated, you know, body edition kind of thing. I'm not afraid to put myself out there for those kind of things, but this one I didn't need to. And that kind of honesty with your audience and surprising them. That's really what built this. It's just authenticity. You know, people have a connection. It's like any, you know, used to be, you'd have a connection with your favorite movie star. Now you have a connection with Markiplier. In a way, it's actually more intimate. I think the benefit of the social media today and to the detriment is the instantaneous and the ability to communicate with more people more quickly. But when it comes down to other people repeating it, that's why I always have to have a caveat with what I'm saying is that I have a distinct advantage with my quantity of subscribers, but also the relationship that I've built and the way that I've built it. There are some people that make funny, entertaining videos that are great content, but it doesn't relate to people on a personal level. And some of that videos, like they, they have more success, less success than the videos that I do. But I think it's just because I have consistently made my channel about my journey as a creator and my skill building as a filmmaker or whatever you want to say that every aspect of it has been me building my skills and people see that journey. So this as a feature film is the natural progression for where I have wanted to go for 13 years. Well, that was going to be my next question. It's like, why even bother with these, you know, ancient theaters out there? When you've got your audience, you can produce whatever content you want for that audience. Why bother with theaters? People still love movies. And I think that there is a magic in theaters that cannot really be replicated at home. But I think that there is in human nature, an honoring of a prestige, you know, a level of, wow, this is real. You know, you can have all the internet stuff and all the internet numbers that you want. But there's something about the silver screen, the idea that someone is making something in the theater that is sacred still to this day. And there's an art form to it. And I think as people evolve and, you know, as we as a society of the technological advancements, we still respect that art and the craft. And it's such a focusing of so many different crafts and art forms down into a single medium, a single piece of art that has people at the highest skill levels, sometimes not the highest skill levels. But it's such a focusing all that thing that it is a culmination. It is, it is kind of a peak. So to make something that is worthy of being in a theater in people's minds, I wanted to convince other people in the industry and my own fans that like, yes, I have gotten here and you can too. If you succeed this weekend and you get the box office that people think you're going to get, there's going to be a ton of media associated with that. So that only raises your profile beyond where you currently are and where are the pre-sales right now? Seven million, I read. I think so. We didn't do any tracking because we didn't expect it to go past 50 theaters. So we didn't hire any company to track it. We didn't pay for any tracking. So every other number is something that someone else has said, I have to go by faith that that's real. Yeah. I'm looking at the NRG tracking and they have it at about nine million for this weekend. They're pretty sophisticated. This is the kind of movie that they're often wrong about though because it doesn't adhere to the traditional kind of pre-release surveys. So it could go higher than that. It could go lower than that. The pre-sales I have read are about seven million so that's kind of the floor for the weekend. I'm not sure how much walk-up business would there will be of people who don't already know you and who see this and be like, oh, okay, let's go see that. But I want to get into the little bit of the economics of that because you're using this company's centurion. Do they do this for a fee or are they taking a percentage of gross? They're taking a percentage. I won't say what it is, but I think that's how the model works out. And then you, as not a big studio, you do not have the leverage with the theaters that a Disney or Universal might. So I imagine the split on the gross for the weekend is probably close to 50/50, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I'm fine with that. I don't feel the need to strong arm a theater into being like, I get more, you get more. You're not Taylor swifting them. Yeah. I like everybody benefiting. And theaters need to succeed right now for anything in the future to go. So I'm happy to do 50/50 because that's fair. You're taking a chance to put my movie there. I still make good because I don't have anyone else that's taken anything of it. So for me, that's great. I don't really care much about making a profit. I haven't really made a profit on any of my other things. My other ventures fund everything I am. I am good. Well, but let's do the math here. If you spend a couple million to produce this thing, you're not spending anything on traditional marketing and you're getting half the gross with some percentage going to your distributor, your booker, that's, you're already kind of in the black already. I am. Yes. I won't deny that I'm, I'm, I'm definitely good and I'm, I'm happy with that. I'm probably going to put most of the proceeds towards bonuses to the crew. And of course, the other actors and everybody that had a hand in this. This is quite a flex because most people in traditional Hollywood are nervous as hell opening weekend and their livelihoods depend on the movie. You're like, this is my fling. This is my side gig. My real business is my creator business. This is just kind of for fun. Yeah. I don't want to be so casual about it because I feel like that might be insulting to some people. But for me, that is how I've approached all my projects is like, this is a passion project. Whether or not it makes money is irrelevant to me making it. The end result is for the fans and people to enjoy something is being made and as a showcase for the skill of the people that we're making it. Well, and you are almost certainly going to outgrose the Melania Trump documentary. And there's something in that, I think, yes, that is, that is something there. All right, I want to get your thoughts a little bit about kind of the state of the creator economy and how you see it from your perspective, what these big Hollywood companies are doing in the space. Like, what do you think of Netflix going after some of these creators and doing podcasts and kind of trying to be more like YouTube? Have they approached you yet? They have not. I have heard that they have been looking into deals for things like that. I think that it's an interesting move, but one of the things that I know that they won't be able to offer that is offered on YouTube and why I constantly circle back to it as my home base is the freedom that comes with it for better for worse, right? A lot of YouTubers, even if YouTube is there, they're not really helping that much. They create the sandbox for us to work in and they have guardrails for the rules, but for the most part, we're on our own and we're not beholden to anyone. That's why I have the audacity to do this movie thing in the first place because I'm just going to do it anyway because I'm the only one that's motivating myself to do it and I'm the only one who's going to see it through to the end and with YouTube and say Netflix comes in, they want to make a deal. That deal is going to still have the same kind of strings attached to it that any deal with a studio has. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just want to license what you do. I mean, for Netflix right now with these podcasts, they just kind of want to extract them from YouTube and take advantage of their fandoms and the minutes that people spend watching these podcasts, maybe they would say to you, "Just do your thing," but you would have to potentially leave YouTube and many creators do not want to do that. Yeah. And there is a reason for that. It is just home. It is a consistency. There is an expectation to it. I think the YouTube versus say TikTok has this kind of through thread where you know that it's going to be there next year with TikTok, you're not 100% sure anymore, especially lately of where that's going to be as a platform for creators to be. And especially the creator fund that they had the income for potential creators is really unsteady. People don't even know if they're going to be paid out after the new purchase that just happened from what they had waiting for them in their share of the creator fund. I hope they do. I'm not saying I hope they don't, but at least YouTube, the checks come every month like clockwork. Right. You expect them to be. Yeah. Well, conversely though, like that's the Netflix side on the YouTube side on which is going to become which first you've participated in the YouTube originals program. And they're not doing as much of that anymore, but the speculation is that YouTube is going to start doing more kind of Netflix style deals with people to produce original exclusives that may be higher budgets, they're going after things like the Oscars and the NFL to try to create programming on YouTube that might involve some high performing creators like yourself. Would you be open to more of that? It is entirely possible. I actually was the last YouTube originals within space with Markiplier. It was one of those things where I believe that they had a good reason to do this, but they stopped. It's not that it was run poorly. I think it was run about the same as any other studio, but it wasn't very YouTube in its way where it was with my project it was. They gave me complete creative control. I had my own freedom to do whatever I wanted. So when it comes to YouTube TV though, I know that's a huge success for YouTube. They're gobbling up all these other programming, but I know that they have all this access to eyeballs from these other programs like old and the Oscars is super fascinating. And so they have this platform where a lot of people are going to be on for all of their entertainment. It would make sense to do something with the creators, but I have heard nothing about it. So I do not know. Netflix has been pushing into games with sort of mixed results there. I wonder how much gaming content would work on Netflix. I don't think very well just because the the bevy of content on YouTube and the creators that are on there. And even if Netflix was getting 100, 200, a huge roster of gaming creators, there are thousands upon thousands more on YouTube. And so to draw eyes away from those, even if they got the biggest names like some of the biggest gaming creators over there, the majority of views are always going to be of the mid-range channels cumulatively by sheer number alone. The number of views that come from those versus the top creators is astronomically higher for the bulk of the views that come there. So it's a difficult thing to pull away from. Yeah, it's funny because I see that when Netflix goes after these podcasts now and it's like is YouTube even upset about that because how many podcasters can Netflix pull away from YouTube where it actually matters? Like the whole point of YouTube is the tonnage. And if some of these big pods go over to Netflix, it's like, okay, great, bye. You'll be back. I mean, yeah, that that kind of is the end result. That doesn't mean that they can't benefit from it. They could definitely make money from those deals. I think Netflix, if they play the card rights, of course, everyone can make money. But yeah, when it comes to the behemoth, I think YouTube is kind of this thousand pound monster that's lurking over everyone's shoulders and they're trying, they were trying their best to ignore it for a long time and now they have to face it. So they got to chip away in little bits at a time. But if, you know, even a death by a thousand cuts, anything can topple like so it is interesting to see where it's going to go in ten years. But you're not leaving YouTube anytime soon. No, I have no reason to. There's no check big enough. It's been good to me. And that's where the people are. I have made my money. I'm happy. But if there is a deal that's so compelling and doesn't compromise my freedom to make, yeah, I'm not going to be stupid and ignore it, but still it's hard to fight that. It's hard to offer a more compelling offer. So what is your advice to small time filmmakers that want to break through in theaters other than get yourself 38 million YouTube followers first? What is your advice to navigating the self-financing, self-distribution route? One of the most important things to realize for filmmakers today is and they probably do is the accessibility of technology is allowing you as a filmmaker to take on more roles than ever before. And that can seem controlling. But when you are starting out, you don't have a crew. You're lucky if you have a crew or people that you can rely on in the different disciplines. YouTube teaches you, at least for me, to start off expecting to do everything yourself. I have to learn all these pieces, editing it, especially editing it. But now there are there are programs that can allow that to be more accessible. Like Divinity Resolve is a great tool because you can do the edit color, the special effects, and then the music and audio finishing all in the same program. You could make an entire movie in one program for one fee. It's way more accessible. There's all these tools coming out, which means that you can start honing your craft from a higher starting point sooner if you're willing to just put it out there on a platform that has the most eyeballs of any of them, where you are free to put anything. So YouTube is an excellent place to start putting there. I think Vimeo is running into some trouble now. It doesn't have as many eyeballs on it that used to be where you people would put their short films. But now YouTube really truly is a place to take these short films seriously. And they will be pushed because there's enough people to see them that want to see this creativity. Or there's a hunger for good stories, always an insatiable hunger. And so it's not so much a competition. It's just like this is a battleground for you to hone your ability and hone your craft. And I say go for it with reckless abandon. Well, the 38 million followers also helps a little bit too. Yes. Yes. But I started from zero just like everybody else. You did. Yeah, exactly. So congratulations to you. Good luck with the film. Thank you very much. We're back with the call sheet, Craig Grammys, Sunday night. You haven't been to the Grammys, have you? I've never been to the Grammys. You love going to the Grammys. You're good. I do. And I always bring my wife, which is why you've never been because I never invite you to go. Well, deservingly, Kimberly gets to go. It's the one award show she likes. So and rightly so. I mean, it's basically a big three hour concert. Who are you most excited to see this year? I think probably Olivia Dean. Yeah. She wins. Yeah, I hope she wins best new artist and I got guys always great and I've seen her perform stuff from the new album, but I hope she'll do a new song. So we joke on the fantasy show that Olivia Dean's music feels like the season of fall. That's a little bit although LA winter is like what 75 degrees. So maybe that that qualifies. So the ratings for last year's Grammys were down 9% from the year before. I got to 15.4 million viewers on CBS, despite it being a great show. I mean, there was great performances. The Chapel Rowan performance was amazing last year. There was lots of cool stuff, Gaga and Bruno Mars. And Beyonce finally got her big album of the year when Taylor was there. So there's lots of reason to tune in, but I think they had a lot of marketing issues because of the LA fires last year they weren't really able to promote the show as much as they normally would have and a lot of the telecast was sort of telephone style. So I'm actually, if we set the line for this year at 15.4 million viewers, I'm going to take the over. I think they will get to that and perhaps with the help of the Nielsen out of home and big data, they will get to a bigger number than that. You'd think that the Grammys would be an award show that could last the test of time. I understand where the Oscars dropped, not many people go to the movies anymore and movies are less popular, less a part of monoculture, it feels like musicians and big music are always going to be popular. Yeah, well, that's what ABC is thinking Disney just swiped the show from CBS and they did a $500 million 10-year deal to broadcast the show worldwide. And if I was Disney, I would much rather have the Grammys and the Oscars, even though the Oscars gets a higher rating now, the music is always going to be popular and this is essentially a three-hour telephone, like it's a big concert broadcast, whereas the Oscars, you know, what are the Oscars in an age when you see celebrities everywhere all the time? Totally. That's a big challenge. Well, and the Oscars rewards sometimes small films, sentimental value and hand in things like that. The Grammys is basically, if the box office awards, but for music where it'll always be the biggest artists in the world are going to be nominated. They change the rules a while back to make sure that the biggest artists from each category of music are going to be in those big categories, the big four categories. And I'm not going to make a prediction on the album of the year, record of the year. I do think the most interesting race is for album of the year between Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar. The Oscars makers say that Bad Bunny is probably going to get it and that this will be his big coronation, his big year. If Bad Bunny wins album of the year, that will be the first time in the modern era that a non-English language album has won album of the year, which we grade, especially heading into the Super Bowl, which one of the money is playing, and there was all that controversy around it. Silly. I actually, I love Gaga, so I'm always rooting for Gaga, but Lucas will be very happy at Bad Bunny wins. I enjoy Bad Bunny as a comedian. I like him on SNL. I agree. He's really funny. Probably the only funny thing in happy gum or two. That's true. He should come out and perform on the Grammys as Shrek. Oh, yeah, right. He did the digital, the please don't destroy Shrek. Yes. Yes. Very comedically talented. That's good. Ben Winston, if you were listening, get Bad Bunny into a Shrek outfit. He should be in Shrek 5. That's really what he should do. He should. I bet he will be. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Mark Fishbok, producer Craig Horoback, Artitor Jesse Lopez, and John Jones. I don't want to thank you. We'll see you next week.