The YouTube video that broke Hollywood

The Colin and Samir Show

Colin and Samir

Business

4.9 • 665 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

19-year-old Harvard economics student Wesley Wang will be writing and directing a film based on his short nothing, except everything., which he uploaded to YouTube in Sept. 2023. On this episode of the Colin and Samir Show, we talk to Wesley about how he got a deal with Sony Pictures and Darren Aronofsky. We also talk to Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw about the future of the entertainment industry, and where creators fit in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In September of 2023, Wesley Wang uploaded a YouTube video called Nothing Except Everything.
0:05.3	And then his life changed.
0:07.4	I got into some film festival, most of the major ones rejected me.
0:10.1	And then I was just like, fuck it.
0:11.0	Let me put it on YouTube as like a last resort.
0:12.8	It went viral.
0:13.6	And then Darren Aronowski saw the shore on YouTube.
0:15.9	And he literally called email me.
0:17.2	The email just reads, watch your film.
0:19.3	Can you drop out of Harvard? I replied,
0:21.2	like, I've been trying to find a good reason to. As you saw, today on the show, we're going to be
0:25.7	chatting directly with Wesley to hear about how he sold this video to Sony Pictures. So the news
0:31.1	just broke that. I'm going to be writing and directing the film under Sony TriStar, and Darren
0:36.1	will be producing. And later on the show, we are going to hear from Lucas Shaw, who's the managing editor
0:41.1	at Bloomberg News, to get his take on if this is a one-off or if this is part of a growing
0:45.8	trend of YouTubers taking over Hollywood.
0:48.1	I was curious if you could give us just a high level of what the current state of Hollywood
0:52.8	is and like how the film business is going.
0:56.1	I'd say chaos or anxiety.
1:06.5	So before we talk about why this video blew up on YouTube and speak directly to Wesley, I want to
1:11.7	thank the sponsor of today's episode, Biosites. Biosites is a link and bio tool from Squarespace.
1:17.1	And because Biosites is part of the Squarespace family, it's a very easy to use and very
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