At the beginning of 2026, the YouTube creator Markiplier wrote, directed, starred in, and self-funded his first feature film, Iron Lung. With few connections in the film-distribution world and little to no marketing, he was able to get the film into more than 4,150 theaters.
To date, the film has grossed around $50 million worldwide.
Everything about this story is highly unusual. An indie film with no stars, no distribution machine, no marketing budget, and made by a first-time writer/director somehow lands thousands of theater bookings and then makes more than 10x its budget. Well, Markiplier has cultivated some unique foundational elements over the years, but as a whole, his method is an example of a new direction in film distribution and marketing.
Distribution used to be pretty simple. Release films in theaters, leave them there until they stop making money, then VHS (and DVD) rentals and sales, premium-cable licensing (HBO, Showtime, etc.), and finally broadcast-TV sales a couple of years down the road. This was a reliable and long revenue tail.
Streaming changed this. First, it collapsed DVD rentals and sales. Then it collapsed the “exhibition window” (a film’s length of time in a theater) and lessened the value of premium-cable licensing or broadcast-TV sales. Suddenly, a film’s revenue tail consisted of a short time in a theater followed by a presence on some streaming platform, neither of which may have been noticed by the audience. After all, your competition used to be whatever other films were in the theaters at the time. Now your competition is every film that has ever been released.
Which brings us to marketing. That too used to be pretty simple. Because the audience’s focus points used to be more concentrated, one could have a few well-placed film trailers, TV promos, magazine and newspaper ads, actors on talk shows, and, if you were really going out there, a few billboards. With these points of promotion, you were reaching an enormous audience; people knew about your film. The internet blew those focus points apart, and the audience became fractured—some to Facebook, some to Reddit, some to Twitter, some to Instagram, then some to hundreds of video games, multiple streaming apps, infinite websites, and 500 cable channels. With a great deal of money, you could blast them in all these places, but for those with less than $50m (minimum) for marketing, promoting a film became daunting.
“Focused film marketing” is talked about a great deal but not commonly employed. The reason is that it’s not easily repeatable. There’s no standard method that can be reliably applied to film after film. Focused film marketing means not trying to reach every possible person but rather understanding your target audience and what your film is truly about and putting together a plan that works for that film’s audience. It’s going to be different every time, and that’s a lot of work.
Still, it’s one of the only ways now to let your audience know about your film. And once you have them, there’s the holy grail of a conversion rate. How many target-audience members can you convince to buy a ticket to your film? Engaged audience members are encouraged to pre-buy tickets, guaranteeing a financial benefit to all that use focused film marketing.
For Markiplier’s Iron Lung, the key was having built a YouTube following of 38 million people. He’d spent 14 years making videos for his YouTube channel and other outlets, so his audience was primed for his next goal: to be taken seriously as a filmmaker. They were big fans of both him and his favorite topic, indie horror video games. As Iron Lung was an adaptation of one of those games, they were doubly in. He engaged them in the details of the film, and after booking 60 theaters on the strength of his follower count, Markiplier suggested that these YouTube subscribers ask their local theaters if they would carry it. The subscribers were directed to a film website that his wife, Amy Nelson, had built with a map of all the available theaters. What Markiplier didn’t see coming was the passion of these fans. Within two days, hundreds of theaters had been called, and pre-sales were on fire. Showings sold out again and again. Within four days, Cinemark and Regal were calling, wanting it on their screens. Pre-sales hit $7 million before the film was released. As Markiplier notes, “The model of pre-sales is good because [theater owners] get a sure thing.”
Dennis Rice, a long-time film-marketing guru knows something about pre-sales—he was behind 2023’s Sound of Freedom‘s marketing and financial success. After identifying the film’s target audience, pre-sales were engaged, totaling a reported $10 million before release. It has made over $250 million worldwide to date, against a $14.5 million budget, making it one of the most successful indie films ever. Rice doesn’t just identify a film’s target demographic but also its “psychographic.” Who are the fans of the actors? Who needs this film’s message? Who benefits from seeing this film? And, like Markiplier, Rice then embarks on years of hard work before the film’s release, massaging audience-specific outlets and influencers.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all film-marketing and distribution plan, but it’s one that filmmakers should pay attention to. Rice’s mantra: “Every film is a snowflake. You can’t have a cookie-cutter campaign.”
More filmmakers need to roll up their sleeves and do the preparation necessary if they want to carve a new distribution road in the landscape we’ve now got.
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