Iron Lung Tops 1993 Super Mario Bros. at the Box Office
Mark Fischbach's Iron Lung grossed $24.5 million in its first week, surpassing the domestic run of the 1993 Super Mario Bros., which earned $20.8 million. The film was made on a reported $3 million budget, filmed at Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, and was written, directed and starred in by Fischbach.
Originally slated for a limited release, a grassroots campaign pushed the film onto thousands of screens worldwide. The 1993 Super Mario Bros. arrived with a built-in audience and remains culturally significant, but it failed to make a major box office impact. By contrast, the 2023 animated Super Mario Bros.
Movie earned $1.3 billion on a $100 million budget, a scale Iron Lung is unlikely to approach. Iron Lung adapts the 2022 minimalist horror game in which an unnamed convict pilots a tiny submarine with no viewing ports, navigating by rudimentary instruments and uncovering unsettling artifacts.