Markiplier Breaks Down His $50M Movie Live

0:00Our guest today is Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier. We sat down with him and YouTube's Tim Katz at the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles in front of over 650 creators during our event, Press Publish LA, the Hollywood Creator Summit. We threw this event because we are at a true convergence moment right now between YouTube and Hollywood, and we couldn't think of a better person to sit down with than Markiplier. He's a YouTuber in the truest sense who uploaded his first video to the platform over 15 years ago. But more recently, he made headlines after self-financing, directing, and starring in his indie horror film Iron Lung.

0:32The success of the film turned heads in Hollywood, and it marked the beginning of a new era for creators. We get into what this moment on YouTube means, what it takes to go from YouTuber to filmmaker, and what the future of Hollywood may look like now that creators are getting involved. Before we get into the conversation, I just want to say a big thank you to YouTube for coming in as a title sponsor for Press Publish LA. We've been on YouTube for 16 years, so having them back this event and believe in what we're building was truly a full circle moment. They brought out a ton of their team members to help answer questions from creators.

1:04They had sessions about the future of YouTube, and they helped us surprise everyone in the room with Markiplier. Mark, you've been on YouTube for a very long time. you recently made a movie. Yes. Iron Lung. Yes. A lot of chatter in this town about that movie. Good chatter. I think so, right? Can you talk to us a bit about the decision to make a movie after 15 years on YouTube? That feels overwhelming to me. Although I'm someone who has always wanted to make a movie, I feel like my comfort is in making YouTube videos. How do you jump from making videos on YouTube to making a feature film? You probably start by taking smaller steps.

1:51There's this barrier, right? A movie, it's very special. It's prestigious. And they're right, they're right, even if I'm kind of mocking that right there. But if I'm going to be taken seriously in one way or another, I have to make a movie at some point that appears in theaters. I knew that. I don't do much strategy, but that's probably the first part where I was just like, okay, if I want to make bigger things in the future, I have to at least make a movie so they can be presented on an even playing field from everyone else's productions and they could take me seriously as an artist. Because I had made YouTube originals before that.

2:28I had two with Heist and Space with Markiplier, and those were big. One was nominated for an Emmy. I lost. But even those were considered like YouTube things. Even though I know the production for In Space with Mark Ballard was bigger than Iron Lung by a lot. It was like 300 and something pages that I wrote. There's like 89 videos, six and a half hours of content, bigger set, bigger crew, like more cast. It's just, it was bigger in every way than Iron Lung, but it wasn't as focused, right? So I wanted an idea that I could make that was extremely focused so that it would have the best chance to put forward the artistry of the people on the crew that I know were of a certain level of skill.

3:11And then it was going to be the culmination of what I had learned up until that point, making short films and then the YouTube original projects. And then I was like, okay, if the time is now, which it was, I need to make this and I need to have an idea for it. So I foolishly thought that a single location horror movie would be an easy way to get into it. It was definitely not. That feels like a classic trope for all creators. I feel like Colin and I was like, that's not hard. That's really simple. We'll do that really quick. And it's always a beast. So Iron Lung was very successful and started being talked about all over.

3:48And the last numbers I saw, you can tell me, but the last number I saw was it cost close to$3 million and did$50 million in revenue. I would say all things considered.

4:02He hasn't said the real number. Yeah, it could be way less. This could be totally different. You jumped the gun. All things considered, you know, it was probably just under five, I think. I'm not sure where the three came from, but, you know, the publications ran with the three, and I was like, okay, fine. But I would say it's like just under five, all things considered, and then, yeah, it made, it's theater running like 51, close to 52 million, and then it's just about to launch on YouTube for their movies platform, actually this weekend. So that'll be good. And how many theaters did it end up running in?

4:40We stopped counting after a while. And that sounds egotistical. Like, oh, the number's so big, I can't count that high. It was like, it got over 4 ,600. And then when it went international, there were certain subcontractors who were distributing it in their specific regions. And so the website that we had that was keeping track of it after a while is like, oh, man. because it's adding to some, removing from others, and so we just kind of landed around 4 ,700. As the number continued to grow, it really illuminated to me how up for grabs potentially theaters were. Oh, yeah. I don't think I understood that you could ride that wave into more theaters like that just coming from YouTube, and I think it would be easy to look at the success of Iron Long and go, okay, yeah, he's got almost 40 million subscribers, he gets millions of views, he's been on YouTube for a while, Well, sure, that's why it did well.

5:35But I think there would be a lot of creators with a similar audience who might even make a similar quality of movie that I don't think would get people in theaters the same way. Possibly. It really depends on the creator. And I think that's the special thing about YouTube is the relationship that the creator has with their audience is unique. I've cultivated my YouTube channel to be very much about my creative journey. I'm learning things and I'm trying things and I'm failing at things, but I'm doing it in front of my audience all the time. There's tons of other YouTube creators that do things where it's like, I'm literally learning XYZ this week and I'm making a video about that.

6:11It's less about that. It's more me trying to find creative fulfillment and chasing this dream and addiction of making things, which I think all of us creators in one way or another are addicted to some part of the cycle. Some people are addicted to the end result where the audience gives feedback. I'm addicted, thankfully and horrifyingly, to the worst part where I'm pulling all-nighters and I'm working really hard on something that I don't think I can do. Because I'm addicted to the feeling of overcoming that doubt. I entered YouTube coming from a very doubtful place at a really low point in my life.

6:46And so the first bit of that addictive cycle started when I realized, oh, I can make something, and it's mine, and it showcases what I can do. and so that has always been what I chased and thankfully there's been people that resonate with that idea and I've just been able to carry it through. This is a natural result of that same thing of making a YouTube video. I don't think that there's all that much difference from a technical perspective of making a movie versus a YouTube video. It's just the scale with which it is done and the margin of error with which your skills have to be good enough to succeed at, right?

7:19But it's the same thing on a general concept. Can you talk more about that? Because when I watched Iron Lung, I felt that because at its face value, if you pitched me like, hey, dude, there's a movie that I want to make. It's a dude in a metal tube reading dials for two hours. I'd be like, Mark, I don't know, man. There's an ocean of blood, too. In an ocean of blood. That's my bad. But when I wrote down in my iPhone notes in the movie, I was like, just wrote the term self-reliance. Because I felt like you were, you did the whole project with the energy of self-reliance, where you financed it yourself, you directed it, you wrote it, you did everything yourself.

8:05But you also control the frame yourself. yourself. And when I watch one of your YouTube videos, I feel like you're one of those creators who you can just flip a camera on and control the frame, even down to the fact that your thumbnails are a lot of times just your face, which is what pulls in millions of people just to go, I want to see this guy in a frame. Is that what you mean by there are similarities to like, you knew you could step in and just control the frame? ah that's a more eloquent way than I would put it yeah uh I think when it comes to uh trusting that I could be in that role and be you know commanding enough to to be there um it's it's also comes with the doubt of like I don't want to do a bad job um and I've found that if I put myself in the position where I'm at that intersection of I think I'm egotistical enough to think I can do it, and then also I'm self-aware enough to be like, oh, I don't want to suck at it.

9:05That cultivates the most self-improvement. It's the most drive to learn the skills that you need to do, even if it's completely panic-inducing and you feel like you're heart racing, trying to desperately get enough to make it seem convincing. Yeah, that is what YouTube is. It's this intersection of ego and desire and doubt. And I feel like all of us feel that. Going on screen, getting in front of camera and making a video is a very difficult thing. It opens yourself up to a lot of judgment. But no one's going to judge me harsher than I judge myself. So if I can do that and overcome my own doubt, then nothing else would really matter to me.

9:45And that's been my, you know, my guiding star going forward is just, you know, I believe in myself enough to make up for the shortcomings that I know are there.

10:03Tim, I want to ask you about what it means for the movie to come out on YouTube, because that's kind of new, right? We talked about shows a little bit funded by brands. You know, Mark, your movie was very much lifted up by the community. What's the future of independent film on YouTube, and specifically even this film coming to YouTube? Yeah, we're obviously thrilled that he's going to distribute it, and it's going to be on a transactional basis. So you can actually, as a user, purchase the film on the platform, which is not new to us. We've seen actors like Amir Khan in India distribute his film very successfully on YouTube in the same way after becoming a creator.

10:41But I think for me, the magic is that we have so many different ways that we can monetize on the platform now. So we talked a lot about ads earlier, but we have YouTube Premium, we have channel memberships, we have shopping, we have brand deals, we have transactional, on and on and on. There's over 15 ways that you can monetize on YouTube now. And some of them are via advertising and some are direct from your audience. And I think the thing that Mark does so powerfully is that connection with his audience. so it feels like a perfect fit for him to have that direct connection, and that is the business model for this.

11:15Mark, do you have any expectations moving forward now of how you want the rest of the Iron Lung story to play out now that it's coming out on YouTube, and then the next step after that is the next potential movie? I mean, I have this problem where I'm always thinking of the next project before I'm done with the first. So in a lot of ways, when the movie came out in theaters, I went, oh, it's done. Oh, finally, I can forget about that. And it's still working on it and still releasing it. And I realized in the Hollywood system, that's very much about it. They treat the movies as these pillars of IP, and they need to make sure it has a life cycle and it sustains.

11:55But that's also very different from how YouTube operates. It's like when YouTube, you make a video and it's done. And for all of its flaws, it's up there for everyone to see forever. And once you delete it or it gets taken down or something. But even then, you know, me knowing who is honest, I know people still have archives sitting on their own computers or there's secreted away things where people can. So even if all the intention in the world is to get rid of it, it'll still stick around. I feel like all I'm thinking of is how I can move forward with the lessons that I learned from this one.

12:30And how can I use this opportunity to try in a tiny or big way to make it easier for other people to do the thing that I just did? Because that's also extremely important to me. As I'm getting older and I've been on YouTube for a long time, I see more and more the results of the years that people have been putting into YouTube and the skills that they've built. the overall skill I think on YouTube as filmmakers and videographers has is so much higher than than the very beginning of it which makes it difficult to get into it but also the wealth of knowledge and the paths being paved like what you said 15 ways to monetize more I don't even know what all those are that's that's crazy uh but that's great because that's what people need so when I'm bringing Ironline exclusively to YouTube it just makes sense because that's my home and that's what I care about the most for all of YouTube's flaws and there are some, but I also have been a big defender of YouTube because I believe it's still one of the best platforms for anyone to get started on their content creation journey.

13:30Like you have obviously TikTok and Instagram, you have various other social medias to get audiences and you can cultivate it there, but they don't have 15 tools for monetization. They don't have a wealth of knowledge in the community to learn from, to collaborate with, and they don't have the consistency that I think YouTube can offer. Even an entry point of the filmmakers that want to release their short films on YouTube, which I think they should, because it's just a showcase for them to put their talent out into the world and discover the other people that are like-minded enough to believe that they can do these projects.

14:03So there's so many avenues for opportunities for people to get on YouTube. And I'm just like, how can I help with that? You mentioned there sharing and taking the lessons from how Iron Lung was made. And you essentially made it in some ways like a YouTube video in that you filled the majority of the roles of writing, directing, acting. What are some of the lessons you learned from doing it that way, releasing it the way you released it, that you'll take to the next project? More pre-production was always better. You can't have enough pre-production. the ability to problem solve is probably the most important director skill you can have because there will always be problems and there will always be things when the writing meets reality and it's not quite working the ability to learn enough of every aspect of the process so that you can talk with the people who are better than you will ever be at those parts of it because as much as I appreciate it's helping my ego a lot of things.

15:09I did it all. But there was still like a hundred other people on the crew all lending their skills and I will never be as good as them. Their departments, I'll never be able to make those kind of practical effects, the costume choices, the set design, you know, I know some VFX but not all. But I know enough about all those processes so that I can communicate effectively with the rest of the crew. Know how something works makes it so that you're not asking them something that's impossible, right? And that's the biggest lesson that YouTubers can have when they're interfacing with other crews is like, you may be really good at what you do.

15:43They've been doing that one thing for as long as you have been doing it sometimes longer. And that can give you an incredible advantage if you can then conversate with them enough that you can get them on the same page with the imagination in your head, right? And so I forget what the question was. What was the question? Yeah. Was that the question? Was that the question? I actually don't know. Was that the question? It was lessons and takeaways. Oh, lessons and takeaways. Yes. Yes. That, what I said, the thing that I did. So being able to communicate better. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's your experience of the reaction?

16:17Like, is it this, like, you've been on YouTube for 15 years. Like, do you still have the feeling of the one of 10 and 10 out of 10? Like, when you get a 10 out of 10, are you like, like, for me, I, like, craft my resume and see where I could get a job because I think it's all over. Oh, yeah. I'm not even joking. I get like super anxious. Things going that bad, huh? It's a real thing. Things are going that bad. Yeah. Yeah. These are all hired actors. But like the reception is like crazy of this film. And obviously the numbers are very big. And a lot of people were talking about it. Was it, what was your experience of it succeeding in the way it did?

16:55Like I said before, like I'm my harshest critic. So I have this bit of a superpower on YouTube is where I don't really care about any negative comments or stuff. It doesn't affect me very much because they don't know me, right? The counterpoint is that I also don't really care if someone says a lot of praise or something like that because they also don't know me. I have looked at the project every way. I know every flaw. I know everything that's wrong with it. I know the parts that make me cringe still to this day. And I know the lessons that I will take from that and move forward. So the response, my only goal, my only goal when it came out was I said I wanted it to be at least one person's favorite movie.

17:36And I think I got that. It's at least one freak out there. It's my favorite movie. They love the blood. And I think that, you know, that simplicity of that is made me make a project that is at least committed to the original idea, unique enough because there were a lot of constraints and concessions that I had to make for my own desire to get a shot outside of the sub or do anything other than be in that sub but it's like that's not what the story is, that's not what the game is and so being in that box I knew I was going to run into things that my skills weren't good enough to succeed at or at least what I thought it wasn't, still made a movie at the end of the day just like we still make a YouTube video at the end of the day, and we got to post it sometimes.

18:23Thankfully, it got out there and people really resonated with what I was trying to say and the deeper meanings I was trying to lace into it where I could. That's the kind of response that I really, really appreciate. I'd be curious to hear from you, considering you've been on YouTube for so long, what you make of this moment on YouTube now and this convergence of YouTube and Hollywood, considering and you're at the center of it. And there are some creators that we'll hear from today who make what you feel like could be on TV or could be in theaters, but they distribute it on YouTube. And I think when I watch your channel, some of what I love about it is that one of your most recent videos, What Happened to Iron Lung, you start and you're in this film set up with a mic, and then about 40 seconds in, you cut, and you're like, ah, I was a little too angry in that section.

19:10All of a sudden, we're watching you at a webcam in your hotel room, and you're like, I'll just finish the video from here. It has 4 million views and 10 ,000 comments. And that to me is YouTube, just the, I will do whatever I need to do to get a camera up and talk to my audience. That's very different than some of what we're seeing on YouTube in this moment. Yeah. I think that it is important, more important now than ever to remember that it's the audience that makes everything possible. That it's very easy to forget that there are people behind the numbers. the convergence that a lot of this happens is a convergence of business, right?

19:45It's because business needs to operate for some larger things to happen. That's the unfortunate reality of everything. But the core tenet of all of it is that there are people watching. One person is dedicating their time, and time is the most valuable thing we have. And yet they're giving up time to watch this random crap that you're putting out there. And so you have to remember that that is an exchange. You're giving them something for their time. Even if it's sometimes this monetary is coming in for a product or a movie or something like that, but most of the time it's time. And I want to make sure that when I do anything, no matter the scale of it, no matter how many things are moving, it's the people.

20:31One person's time is just as valuable as in others. And if you remember that, you're going to make better decisions going into the future of what you should do with this idea that you have in your head. I remember what you said, at the center of it. And I don't think I'm at the center of it. I think that there's, this week especially is a good example of it. There's tons of other YouTubers that are making cool projects. And I think that I was not the first and I will not be, hopefully not the last. But if I have to be, I'll be the last. If I'm the last person on the hill going like, YouTube is still good.

21:05Everyone can make stuff on here. I think that that'll be cool. But it's like the better story is that there's so many other people that are doing exactly what I did or something similar. And they're having success with it. And I believe that that is inspirational for other people. And inspiration is the most valuable currency that we could have. And if I can exchange that time for a little bit of inspiration on their side to push them to do something else, then that makes it all worth it in my mind. What's inspiring you right now on YouTube? What are you watching? I'm watching garbage on YouTube.

21:40I'm not watching any. I watch like, so I've been playing Factorio recently, so I've been watching like Factorio builds and stuff like that, you know. I have no idea. Yeah, it's nothing. You don't know Factorio? Anyway, do you guys know what Factorio is? Okay. Yes! Oh, there are dozens of us. anyway so and then I've been watching a lot of GoPro review videos because they've got a new camera coming out I'm just like god why won't they give me one please anyway that's a whole other story what inspires me I guess not very much right now but that's because I feel pretty satisfied with what I have and there's a lot on my plate I guess what I just said the other people that are making movies and having success is super inspiring, that's incredibly heartwarming, I love that I love seeing other people succeed I've had plenty of success, I often think that I don't need any more but I just keep chasing other projects and they happen to work out and that's cool but even if it didn't, I'd be fine with that I didn't make a penny on the other projects that I did before this, none of my short films made any money, the YouTube originals definitely didn't make any money, not not any fault it's just the way that it was it was a YouTube originally and you put it out there for the world but it didn't matter to me it didn't matter that it didn't have success so even if the next one doesn't make as much success or is as financially beneficial it doesn't matter because it will be the application of the lessons that I learned from the previous thing going into the future and if it happens to be better received and if it happens to find a larger audience that's great if it doesn't that's great too I'm still going to take the lessons from that and apply it to the next thing because, again, I'm addicted to the cycle of making, not necessarily the cycle of getting results.

23:30Do you have a perspective on why sketch comedy creators are having so much success in indie horror? Like if you look at Curry Barker and Obsession. Comedy and horror are very closely related. To oversimplify, it's like one's a surprise that's harmless and one's a surprise that could kill you. But they're both like, you know, generally, I'm not saying jump scares, one thing or another, but it's things that are out of the ordinary and they kind of go along the same route. But I think generally horror's an accessible thing. There's a wide audience and there's room for error. Comedy, there's actually very little room for error because if it's not funny, it's not enjoyable.

24:11But horror, if it's not scary, it can still kind of be enjoyable. There's plenty of B horror movies out there that aren't particularly scary or well-made that people will still watch. On the other side, there's not really many bad comedies that people would bring friends to. So they're weirdly related, but I think the stakes are in some way lower with horror. So maybe. One thing I love about all the projects you do is I find them to be very memorable. You made a channel for a year called Unus Annus that you deleted. It was ephemeral. That was a really unique project that I remember, and especially because of the scarcity of it.

24:55We're in this moment right now where people are making so much content. Colin and I have called this the abundance era. There's so much out there. But you seem to find ways to make things that people remember, things that are meaningful to people. What's your advice to the creators in the room? I think that's what we all want to do. We want to make something that people feel and that they remember, that sticks in their mind. What's your advice to creators? to do that? I'd say it's like what you just said the feeling is more important than anything with Unus Honest it was about a feeling I in my past I've lost friends I've lost family members I think we all have and that's not a fun feeling it's not a it's not a feeling that you know we want to experience a lot but it's a feeling that's extremely important the Unus Honest was in a way an exercise in letting go.

25:46Like letting something go was kind of the point of it. Or knowing that something was going to go and there's nothing you could do about it, but making the most of the time that you had when it was there. That's the feeling. And it was a unique project because we put so much effort into the channel that we were going to delete. For those who don't know Unisonus, it was a channel I made with Ethan and my wife Amy and other people that helped us out, Evan and a ton of other people. But it was a project that we announced and then said we were going to delete it in one year. Unus onus is Latin for one year.

26:20And then at the end of it, we did delete it. And to make it as special as possible, we made a video every day. And that cycle was very difficult because it was a live action random challenge video. Sometimes we did sketches, we did this whole mockumentary for it. We put so much effort into it and it was more valuable, which made it more heartbreaking to let go of it. And that feeling, if we want to chase that feeling, we have to understand all aspects of what makes that feeling mean something. It's harder to lose something that you care a lot about. And so we have to make people care about it.

26:55And so we made videos that were as entertaining as we possibly could. We made the exercise of audience coming to the channel be a habit that they could form. and then the looming deadline of it dying was always going to be there. And so that resulted in an incredible final live stream. We had 1.7 million concurrent viewers all at the same time watching us delete it. And that was after a, oh, thank you. All right. It was, was anyone here for that live stream? That was a few people, yeah. There was a few people here for that live stream. And it was so incredibly special and it was so meaningful.