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Teen's Coming-Of-Age YouTube Video That Won Jim Thorpe Film Fest Becoming Hollywood Movie

A young director's short film on YouTube with more than 7.3 million views that was filmed across New Jersey will soon be made into a major motion picture.

Wesley Wang with David Mazouz and Lily Chee on the set of "nothing, except everything."

Wesley Wang with David Mazouz and Lily Chee on the set of "nothing, except everything."

Photo Credit: w.wang64 Instagram

According to Deadline, TriStar Pictures — a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment — purchased the rights to Wesley Wang's "nothing, except everything" following a bidding war.

It will be produced by Darren Aronofsky and his company, Protozoa Pictures.

The 12-minute 50-second movie is about a graduating high schooler navigating a "world of seemingly inevitable chaos by finding order in the number 7," according to the IMDB description.

Starring David Mazouz and Lily Chee, "nothing, except everything" was filmed at Cedar Grove High School and in the Holland Tunnel. 

Wang, who is studying economics at Harvard University, told Envi Media that the Holland Tunnel scene was intended to be reminiscent of a similar shot in "Perks of Being a Wallflower."

The film won "Best Short Film" at the Jim Thorpe Film Festival in Pennsylvania and "High School Film Competition" at the Indy Shorts International Film Competition, both in 2023.

Wang says in a statement on the Jim Thorpe Film Fest website that "nothing, except everything" is "by far the most personal I've ever told," and a project he made in his last year of high school.

"It seems like now more than ever our generation is caught in a whirlwind of chaos and uncertainty, fighting to stay above ground in a never-ending rollercoaster of adventures and memories.

Fleeting moments of transcendence drift away as fragments of a collective nothingness, leaving each of us searching for some consistent disguise of order buried deep within our shared human experience."

The idea was to capture that feeling of "nothing making sense, and yet everything somehow feeling so damn right."

Click here to watch Wesley Wang's "nothing, except everything" on YouTube.

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