Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Charts with Dan. We are a little bit late this week because I got off the plane yesterday from Park City, came home, started to prep the show. And if you were disappointed that last week's show was a little bit short, then you're going to get your money's worth this week because we have so much to go over, including streaming numbers with all of the biggest shows of the year, as well as updates to the all-time streaming charts. But more importantly, we have the box office from this past weekend, which saw a huge win for YouTuber Markiplier and his film, which was independently produced and distributed. It almost took that number one spot. There's some other things we're going to talk about in the box office top 10. So, let's just jump right into it and look at the results from last weekend's box office.
At number one, when all the final numbers came in was "Send Help" from Sam Ramy at $19.1 million, which is a good opening for that film, but it has kind of been eclipsed by the film that is at number two, which is "Iron Long." As I mentioned from Markiplier, who is a big YouTuber here on the platform, it came in at $18.36 million. So, less than a million dollars away from taking that number one spot. This is an estimate, an updated estimate that came in from Deadline yesterday, and it was based off a stronger Sunday than had originally been seen. So, this is something you really don't see very often, not only a film that was independently produced, but when you look at the marketing, the stories that I've read about the film is that there was essentially very little spent on marketing. It was all done through YouTube, through social media. The budget on the movie was reportedly around $3 million. So, this is already an incredibly profitable film. And again, as I said, to cut through the studio system and to get a movie in this many theaters, to get it up to number two, it really just goes to show the power of a platform that is considered by the many to be a non-traditional platform. Still, a YouTube channel and social media, but this is maybe the most high-profile result that we have seen so far.
Now, I don't necessarily know if this is an official list, but I tried to put together a list of the biggest openings for YouTube creators domestically. There may have been some people that I left out. Again, this is just based on my research. And I included David F. Sandberg. He really takes these top four spots here because he did start his career posting a lot of what he did on social media and YouTube specifically, including "Lights Out," which would become one of his top-grossing films. So, these are the biggest opening for YouTube creators. "Shazam" at number one at $53.5 million. That's from David F. Sandberg, as is "Annabelle Creation" at $35 million. "Shazam, Fury of the Gods" at $30 million and "Lights Out" at $21.6 million. And then we have Markiplier and "Iron Lung" at number five at $18.3 million. Then we have "Talk to Me" from the Philipps. They posted on YouTube as Rakaraka. They came in at $10.4 million. Another David F. Sandberg film, "Until Dawn," is at number seven at just over $8 million. Then we have "Bring Her Back" from the Philippraa at number eight. Together from director Michael Shanks who ran a channel called Tim Tim Fed at $6.7 million. And then we have Chris Stuckman "Shelby Oaks" at number 10 at $2.3 million. If there's anyone I left out, I'm sure that uh somebody will let me know. So, some YouTube creators now kind of graduating from the platform and making their own feature films.
And it was really interesting to see. I was tracking "Iron Lung" as it was heading toward theaters. I'm going to be 100% honest. I I don't really I I haven't really watched much of what Markiplier does. It's kind of in a different world uh than I am and I don't watch, strangely enough, a whole lot of YouTube in general uh because I'm busy making stuff for YouTube. But it's great just to see an independent film do this well. And I know it's early in the show, but since we're talking about "Iron Long," I wanted to get to today's trivia question. It is very rare for a movie that's not involved with a major studio to be number one.
At number three is the documentary "Melania," which opened at $7.16 million. It is about the first lady of the United States. And it's it's in a weird way, it's in many ways a mirror image of "Iron Lung." "Iron Lung" opened $8.36 million, but it was very profitable because its budget was about $3 million. "Melania" opening at $7.16 million, which is a very high figure for a documentary. We'll look at that in a minute. But it was the most highly um I'm not going to say budgeted, but the most highly paid for documentary of all time. Amazon acquired it for about $40 million. Reports have the promotion for this documentary being at $35 million. Some have disputed that figure, but even if it's half that, that is far higher of a marketing budget than you see for a standard documentary. This was a film that was produced by or acquired by the biggest company in the world, Amazon, given a nationwide release with an unheard of marketing budget.
And when we look at the openings for documentary films in general, Justin Bieber, "Never Say Never," is at number one at $29.5 million. This is all time domestically. Now, you know what's a concert film? What's a documentary? I didn't put the AIS tour here because it's a concert film, but never say never more of a documentary. Fahrenheit 911 comes in at number two with 23.9 million, followed by Michael Jackson's "This Is It" at 23.2 million. One Direction, "This Is Us," is at number four. Chimpanzee is at number five. This is back from the era of the Disney Nature theatrical documentary. Disney Nature's "Earth" is at number six. "Melania," according to my calculations, with the seventh highest opening for a documentary ever ahead of Katie Perry, "Partard of Me" back in 2012 at number eight, "March of the Penguins" at number nine, and 2016, "Obama's America," which by virtue of its format is classified as a documentary at $6.5 million.
Now, this has been a weekend of a lot of, you know, conspiracy theories or whatever you want to call them about the box office. I've seen some of them saying that Markiplier's grosses were suppressed. I've seen others saying that Melania's grosses were artificially boosted. I try to look into that whenever I hear about that. And there's no hard evidence either way. Um I I really think that what you should take away from both of these is that you have with "Iron Lung" a film that was uh just an unprecedented success for the kind of movie that it is. And with "Melania," again, this was a film that was boosted by the biggest company in the world that was promoted by the sitting president of the United States to a a fan base, I guess, if you want to call it that, that has been fiercely loyal to him in the past. So, it's really not shocking that it did as well as it did. I get it. Whenever there's a result at the box office that people don't like, they want to look for a reason for why it's not legitimate. Uh, but I I think the main thing to look at here is the continuing performance of both of these films and the special circumstances that surround both of these films.
