If you’ve been active on the internet the past year or so, or if you’ve been hunting on Steam for the best-selling indies, you’ve probably come across Iron Lung. This short, $6 game about navigating a submarine through a sea of blood has captured the minds of so many people with its fascinating world, and it’s getting a movie soon.
This movie is directed by Mark Edward Fischbach, known as Markiplier online. He’d been interested in going beyond basic YouTube content creation for a while, with previous endeavors like “In Space with Markiplier,” but Iron Lung will be his first entire film. It’s set to release “soon,” with no other release date window beyond that.
What’s in the Trailer?
Throughout this trailer, we can hear narration taken straight from the game, from the paper in the back of the submarine. Currently, the narrator is unknown; Many believe it’s Markiplier himself, but the character writing this monologue and the character Mark seems to be playing is different in the source material, so we’ll have to see.
We see a character rising out of a pool of blood, which is entirely new and original content for this movie, seen nowhere in Iron Lung. The game didn’t even have any characters beyond the single anglerfish at the very end, so seeing that we’re going to get some proper characters to develop and get attached to is new.
The character in question is likely either a previous prisoner trapped on the Iron Lung or the current protagonist we play in the game, and either way, Mark himself is playing them. This is quite hard to see, though, given he’s been drenched in tons of fake blood, likely more fake blood than has been used in any movie prior, as a matter of fact.
This character rises from the pool and is surrounded by Stranger Things-esque red and black clouds with lighting pulsing through them, and after looking towards the camera, the trailer ends. Aside from the monologue, almost all of this is entirely original, meaning the movie will likely explore more of the lore behind Iron Lung rather than taking place in a single location like the game.
This starkly contrasts the first Iron Lung trailer, which only showed the submarine itself, the single location used in the entire game. This means the movie will probably both retell the game’s events while adding context and showing previous Iron Lung voyagers and the space prison they’d been kept in, leaning into the cosmic horror.
We don’t have much more information beyond that, though; all we know is it’s coming soon to theaters. Mark himself has managed to keep quiet, as well as David Szymanski, the original game’s creator, though he confirmed that he’s been involved every step of the way and will cameo in the film. Either way, seeing this much hype around a movie based on a small indie game is still exciting.
Further Reading
If you want to hear more about Iron Lung and maybe discover some new horror games to get enraptured by, stick here for more.
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