Markiplier’s low-budget genre movie looks set to steal the show at the UK box office this weekend, according to distribution sources.
Earlier today the film — which launches this weekend via Shear Entertainment — was clearly out in front in terms of market share of tickets sold today, with Jason Statham’s action pic Shelter in second on its opening weekend and The Housemaid in third.
“Iron Lung is your story for this weekend,” a senior distribution source told us. “It shows that YouTube and Gen Z aren’t the death of cinema,” they claimed, “quite the opposite. Cinemas provide a great hub for fans to congregate in real life, and real world stage for content creators.”
Expectations are that Shelter will have a higher walk-in crowd compared to Iron Lung, whose pull is largely fan-driven. “Iron Lung is doing incredibly well, but I think it’ll tail off quite quickly after today,” our source posited.
As our box office editor Anthony D’Alessandro reports, Iron Lung is also expected to be a big winner in the U.S. The self-financed feature take on the video game broke out with $3.5M in previews on Thursday night. The film is expected to do around $9M-$10M, a great number for a movie Anthony reports cost under $3M and had bare-bones P&A. After initially being lined up for just a handful of cinemas, the movie is expected to open on 2,000+ stateside screens due to demand.
As we reported earlier this week, the buzzed-about sci-fi horror from YouTuber Markiplier recently added to its international release plan with Piece of Magic Entertainment adding a raft of territories. Piece Of Magic was also an international partner on Taylor Swift film The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.
Iron Lung was produced, written, and directed by Markiplier who also stars. Based on the breakout indie horror game of the same name by David Szymanski, the story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic future following ‘The Quiet Rapture’, an event that causes stars and habitable planets to vanish. The synopsis continued: “A desperate attempt to explore an ocean of blood on a desolate moon unfolds when a convicted individual is sealed inside a decaying submarine nicknamed the Iron Lung — a descent into dread that becomes as psychological as it is physical”. Co-starring are Caroline Rose Kaplan, Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock.
Shear Entertainment declined to comment.