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Markiplier's new horror movie, Iron Lung, has been a surprise breakout hit – and it turns out a huge part of the movie was something of a DIY project for the star and director.
Speaking on the Lemonade Stand podcast, Markiplier explained how he judged one aspect of the movie was "not worth the expense."
"We were subcontracting a VFX company to do some of the simulations for the blood and the opening sequence in the movie. And the problem was, the iterations that I needed, because there were some translation differences between hiring them and what I would say I want, and what they would execute upon," he said. "And the problem with simulations is they're incredibly computationally intense. They require a lot of hardware specialized for just doing simulations. It's not just about GPU power, it's about distributed CPU power."
He added: "The fidelity of that shot, the length of it, the amount of time that that blood is visible, and it's from straight up all the way down, it is a really complicated shot to have movie quality. But the iterations [were] costing way too much. And I realized it would be more cost-effective for me to buy my own computer equipment and build my own render farm to make this.
"It would just take time. So I spent about three to six months collecting old servers on eBay, slowly building it out. I turned one of my bathrooms into a render farm. I put another 200 amps into the bathroom. Air conditioning. All of this was cheaper than continuing to iterate, because as soon as I had everything that I needed, all the hardware I needed, I could do it as many times as I needed, and all I was paying for was the power, right? And so, that was a decision that I made. And let me tell you, it was very expensive to keep doing these iterations and it still wasn't quite what I was looking for."
He later added his bathroom set-up is "what made the shots in the movie, all of them."
In the same interview, Markiplier also said he didn't just want to be known as the "games guy."
"I have to be careful with that," he said, when asked if he was considering "games as ideas" for his next project. "There is a trap there. If I only do game adaptations, then I become the 'games guy.' And especially if I do horror game adaptations, I become that."
Iron Lung had a budget of $4 million and has grossed over $48.7 million worldwide after a huge opening weekend, which is pretty impressive. We'll just have to wait and see what Markiplier does next.
You can keep up to date with our guide to all of 2026's most exciting upcoming movies or all the upcoming horror movies worth getting excited about.
