» Wayne Wang’s new film “The Princess of Nebraska” gets YouTube’d » Ningin

Wayne Wang’s new feature film “The Princess of Nebraska” is hosted in its one hour and 19 minutes entirety on YouTube. At the time of this posting, it was on its way to 200,000 views since it’s debut two weeks ago. View counts on YouTube must be from a single unique IP address and a complete view. So with that in mind, that’s a lot of people who have sat down at their monitors and watched a movie about the identity differences of “New China” Chinese and Chinese-Americans who left “Old China.” (That’s my own take of the film. Wayne Wang’s interpretation, and yours, may be different. -David.)

It’s unclear what kind of business model this will evolve into for online distribution of films. Artistically, Wayne Wang has gotten more people to watch “The Princess of Nebraska” than a similar two-week art house run in LA and NYC could ever bring him. But these are 200,000 unpaid movie tickets. With an estimated quarter million production budget for the film, I’m sure YouTube and Magnolia Pictures will be doing some serious accounting on their returns on investment.

“The Princess of Nebraska” stars Li Ling, Brian Danforth, Pamelyn Chee, and Qing Lin.

No trailer this time. Just the complete movie below!

Tags: Brian Danforth, chinese, film, Li Ling, movies, Pamelyn Chee, Princess of Nebraska, Qing Lin, wayne wang, Youtube

16 Comments »

Comments merged with the forum topic: The Princess of Nebraska

Sakura said 10/21/08 6:27 pm

All movies should be on Youtube!

niichan said 10/21/08 6:39 pm

I second that. hehe

otaku said 10/21/08 6:52 pm

I don’t understand why she’s the Princess of Nebraska? Did I miss something?

JerryChen said 10/21/08 6:55 pm

i really wish youtube would offer high def resolution for their videos, it would make releases like this more viable. with movies like this, it’s probably better that they are made free to the public, which gets them vastly more viewership than they would have before.

as for the movie, i might sit down and give it a watch this weekend… maybe -_-

khmeresmily said 10/21/08 7:00 pm

For some reason I instantly though of Palin. haha

saofeng said 10/21/08 8:18 pm

lol She’s from Alaska?

Charissima said 10/21/08 9:45 pm

Wayne Wang movies are really good.

Hoc said 10/21/08 10:20 pm

I believe youtube is working on hi-def. However I don’t see Youtube as the right platform for movies.

AkuenKigahen said 10/21/08 11:10 pm

What else did he produce?

elenastevenson said 10/21/08 11:21 pm

I want to see this one. But I am concerned about the loss of ticket sales if this becomes a long-term film dist. model for many. I saw this film advertised on my last visit to YouTube.

Sakura said 10/22/08 1:09 am

Your last Youtube visit? I visit Youtube every day! haha

JerryChen said 10/22/08 2:09 am

every day? i visited youtube 4 times while i was typing this comment

chiqui said 10/22/08 7:42 am

That was kind of a sad movie.

byrongman said 10/22/08 9:57 am

So how are they making money by doing this?

MirandaX said 10/23/08 1:54 pm

interesting article on this event on Variety yesterday: http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/10/video-princess.html?query=princess+nebraska
P.S.notice how they got the title wrong…
so my opinion on this is, it’s not about Wayne Wang or Asian film or anything like that, Princess of Nebraska is just Magnolia’s touchstone--whether because of Wang’s reputation or the film’s missing of commercial value, the answer is quite clear.

elenastevenson said 11/20/08 8:20 am

Thanks for sharing this, MirandaX. It is a great way to get your work out there--good comparison to FM radio. And yeah, I can see how he’s marketing the other film with this one. I have not seen it yet :( Daggone jobhunting eating into my movie time!!

http://elena.ningin.com

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