This past January, fans of the veteran YouTuber Markiplier turned his feature film debut “Iron Lung” into a global box office hit, convincing thousands of theaters to bring the movie to their screens. Now, that’s happening again with “The Amazing Digital Circus,” the hit YouTube animated series that is bringing its ninth and final episode to the big screen.
This past Friday, indie animation distributor Glitch, which produces “The Amazing Digital Circus,” announced that Episode 8 and the soon-to-be-released finale would be combined into a theatrical event distributed by Fathom in theaters in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Japan on June 5, two weeks before the finale’s YouTube release.
In the four days since the trailer’s release, Fathom tells TheWrap that “The Amazing Digital Circus” has shattered the company’s presale records, with $5 million in tickets already sold more than seven weeks before the release date. Fathom’s previous presale record holder, “Christmas With The Chosen,” earned $3 million in presales in 2023.
But that alone wouldn’t be enough to make “Circus” an “Iron Lung”-esque phenomenon. Fathom CEO Ray Nutt told TheWrap that over the weekend, theater owners have called his company asking to book the film for their screens. The demand has been fueled by a wave of outreach from fans who want to see the final episode with others and support the series, as well as a fear of being spoiled on what happens in the episode before its YouTube release.
Now, instead of a four-day limited engagement in 900 theaters, Fathom will be screening “The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act” for two weeks right up to the YouTube release on a minimum of 1,800 theaters. With theater owners gathered in Las Vegas for CinemaCon this week, at least two exhibitors have told TheWrap they are looking into adding “Circus” to their summer schedule for their screens, so that theater count will only grow in the weeks ahead.
“We’ve had new people calling us to add the film to their circuits, and the ones who already had it are asking to book more showtimes,” said Nutt. “I give so much credit to Glitch for taking a chance on the theatrical environment and to our team for recognizing, as they did with ‘The Chosen,’ that there is a real audience for this series.”
The pilot episode of “The Amazing Digital Circus” hit YouTube in October 2023 and has since racked up more than 425 million views. Created by British-American animator, artist and composer Gooseworx, the series is a psychological dark comedy inspired by Harlan Ellison’s famed sci-fi horror short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.”
The series follows six people who have been transformed into abstract, cartoonish characters in a virtual world run by a manic AI ringmaster named Caine. The latest addition to the group, an accountant-turned-cartoon jester named Pomni, must find a way to keep her companions together even as she finds herself trapped in a world full of absurdity and horror.
The series’ eighth episode (which has 81 million views) ended in a cliffhanger as the humans’ attempts to rebel against Caine led to him being accidentally deleted, turning the Digital Circus into a wasteland. Stuck on their own and now even further trapped in their endless nightmare, the group faces a potentially hopeless situation in the coming finale.
“The Amazing Digital Circus” will be released the same weekend as Amazon MGM’s “Masters of the Universe,” Paramount’s “Scary Movie” revival, and Lionsgate’s “Power Ballad” starring Nick Jonas. Its second week of play will be alongside the new Steven Spielberg sci-fi film “Disclosure Day.”
But the fact that this indie animated series with a budget a fraction of these major studio films is getting a wide theatrical release alongside the likes of Steven Spielberg speaks to how significantly the industry has changed, and exhibitors see hope in more of these kinds of specialty releases fueled by online fandoms.
