There’s a hot new movie en route next month. Or, at least, it seems poised to be a hot one if you go by all the fan requests for their local theatres to include it in their lineups. It’s called Iron Lung, and it’s based on the 2022 video game of the same name, and while that’s rad and all, the real hook here for a legion of hardcore fans is that it’s the directorial debut for Mark Fishbach – far better known as “Markiplier.”
The US YouTuber’s been going strong for over a decade; his work was first popularized via Let’s Plays, and in 2022, he was Forbes’ third-highest-paid content creator. He’s won awards, he’s signed on with United Talent Agency, and… I’m going to stop paraphrasing Fischbach’s Wikipedia page and get into the heart of things now, I promise. The point is, Markiplier is a big deal. And if a probable bot campaign has to prove it, by gosh, some people are going to bot, bot, bot.
General Question
It’s not that there’s no organic hype for Iron Lung. I’m hardly a box office guru, but while I don’t anticipate the independently-developed film is going to rack up records, it should do fine for itself. If you were to take the influx of fan requests for theatre exhibitions into account, and take it all at face value at that, you might be starting to wonder if Iron Lung is slated to smash records – so long as those pesky theatre companies just wake up and smell the dollar signs.
Over on r/MovieTheaterEmployees (see above), Emagine Entertainment employee jesbirch posted a screenshot of a “General Question” from someone claiming “every other theatre showing [Iron Lung] across the US is already sold out and there are no theatres in Minnesota showing it.” This is just one slice of what jesbirch calls a downright bombardment of requests. “We were getting SO many requests,” they add, “so we decided to put shows on sale, but only have 3 tickets sold. Feels like something is off here.”
“I love how every other theater is “sold out” and ‘showing it’ when tickets are not even on sale yet across most theaters. I haven’t even seen a TOS sheet for it come through yet.” -ericf505, current employee at an independent theatre
As ericf505 states above, tickets aren’t available yet in most theatres. But that – and yes, I keep writing “theatres” when sources are typing “theaters,” I’m American, but I’ve worked with UK coworkers too long, I’m sorry – as I was saying, that does not seem to have stopped the widespread proclamations that Iron Lung is an underestimated mint in the making.
irishaioli (wonderful name) posted the above snap, specifically calling to attention the “[Your City/Area]” portion. It paints a vivid image of a coordinated campaign by serious-minded fans who are, dare I say, perhaps taking this all a bit far. “So unsurprising,” replies Yaya0108, “probably just a message copied from ChatGPT.” Yaya0108 goes on, in fact, to post an alleged image from Markiplier himself asking folks to “please contact [their theatres] and request” that Iron Lung be shown.
“We have also heard from a few people. The script looks similar. I’m here to support Mark in his filmmaking… if there’s actual desire for the movie to be shown. We don’t give away bookings though.” -Cinemark employee diedforyoursins
Let me add before I wrap this piece that I’m not saying theatres shouldn’t show Iron Lung. Totally! Why not? I’m not really into YouTubers and all that, but it sounds cool that someone with such a wide reach would bring David Szymanski’s video game to life like this. But if you’re out there spamming the heck out of chains across this country, that does strike me as demonstrative of artificial interest. And you will see, should you peruse the Reddit thread in full, that there is interest in this flick from the fans; so I get where you’re coming from. But employees would probably appreciate not getting so slammed by GPT-esque statements including “[Your City/Area]” in ’em!
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