Wong Fu Productions
Wong Fu Productions is a production company that was founded in 2003 and is best known for its comedic shorts. Unlike most of the companies studied previously, this one is heavily reliant on Youtube and crowdsourcing. For example, on their website instead of shareholders they have careholders and get a lot of their income from branded deals including sponsorships and product placement: Subaru, Wells Fargo, and Mcdonald’s.
In an interview with Datebook, cofounder Phillip Wang, he discusses why Wong fu chose this path specifically “Hollywood is the way of the older generations. With the advent of Netflix, YouTube, and other streaming sites, there is no longer a need for Hollywood to deliver a story. He believes this decentralized system is perfect for the Asian-American community.” Wong fu productions have been able to do much more than their Hollywood counterparts in terms of casting and writing stories about Asian Americans. The dismissal of Hollywood's lucrative format is due to the fact it’s not really open to everyone. The foundation of Wong Fu is focused on creating that opportunity for Asian actors and creators.
Wong fu has been on youtube since 2007 and is well known for the shorts “Yellow Fever”, “Strangers Again” and “Agents of Secret Stuff”. While it seems like youtube would offer more freedom than the average distributor, that’s not the case with youtube red. The project “Single by 30” got picked up by youtube red but when they didn’t want to pick up another season, Wong Fu didn’t have the rights needed to continue the series on their regular youtube channel. There is a lot of freedom in going to youtube but it is completely dependent on how the algorithm promotes your stuff. The best way to circumvent that is to make your product a priority of youtube (the streaming service route) but then you are at the youtube’s mercy. This fate of “Single by 30” led to wong fu primarily departing from their youtube channel into uncertain waters. They currently have a Patreon and are working on a feature film for Netflix.
