Iron Lung is an indie horror film where a convict boards a claustrophobic submarine, sailing through an ocean of blood (80,000 gallons’ worth of fake blood) on a faraway moon. Following the film’s weekend release, Fischbach took to his YouTube channel to make a teary-eyed address to his fan base. “Right now it’s kind of a hero moment to showcase that indie filmmaking was possible,” Fischbach said.
Fischbach built his following as a one-man show. When it came time to promote his film, he stuck to that same solo script. The movie’s marketing entailed a guerrilla operation that started with a YouTube video where Fischbach asked his fan base to call local theaters to feature the film. “If you want it, simply ask your local movie theater if they can [show it] as politely as you can,” Fischbach said to his fans in a YouTube livestream in November. The film ultimately showed at 3,015 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, compared to the 1,778 theaters that showed Melania.
Marketing experts say the film’s successful rollout could impact how studios consider the marketing of future films. Drew Mitchell, the U.S. lead for the Edelman Gen Z lab, told Fortune he believes film studios could start looking to creators to produce a greater pull for audiences. He said they’ll ask, “Are there creators or individuals that we can work with both from a cast or a creative perspective? And then also how can we bring Gen Z into the marketing directly?”
“It didn’t really feel like a film that was being sold to audiences,” Mitchell said of Iron Lung. “I think it’s a little bit more about how a community has decided that something is worth going to, something is worth paying attention to.”
For Fischbach, his YouTube origins are a point of pride. “Where I came from made me able to do the things that I’m able to do,” he said in a livestream last Sunday. “It’s going to keep making me able to do the things that I’m able to do all the way into the future.”
