Eddie Huang.
Photo: KC Armstrong/Deadline via Getty Images
Streaming service and film distributor Mubi denies shelving Eddie Huang’s documentary Vice Is Broke because of the filmmaker’s protests against Mubi’s investment deal with a venture-capital firm that has ties to an Israeli military-tech company. “I did not make Vice Is Broke to help fund genocide. Im not participating in @mubi publicity for our film until there is change on this issue,” Huang wrote in a July 30 Instagram post that encouraged others to also boycott Mubi until action is taken. “I would love to promote the film and have as many people watch but there are more impprtant [sic] things. Id rather be financially destitute than morally broke.” The next day, Huang suggested that the company was trying to make “an example” of him, claiming in a video that Mubi president Jason Ropell had since informed him over the phone that Mubi was ceasing all promotion of his film and that no one would see it unless he and the producers bought it back. Mubi countered in a statement to Deadline that it is “in constructive discussions with the filmmaker and producers about the film’s release on Mubi, and will share further updates as those conversations progress.” Vice Is Broke was originally scheduled for release on August 29.
This situation with Mubi has been giving Huang déjà vu. Vice Is Broke tracks the rise and eventual bankruptcy of Vice Media, which included the lifestyle channel Viceland (home to Huang’s 2016 series, Huang’s World). “Private equity also swallowed up Vice, where I used to work with a lot of great people doing a lot of great work,” Huang said in his July 31 video. “And we made this documentary as a cautionary tale so that people knew not to go down that hill again. It just doesn’t make sense to me why a company would buy a film with a message like this and then do the opposite.”
Mubi has faced backlash since accepting a $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital, which also invests in military-tech start-up Kela. Founded by Israeli intelligence-unit veterans in response to the October 7 attacks, Kela is working to integrate AI and commercial tech into a battlefield operating system. “Over the last several days, some members of our community have commented on the decision to work with Sequoia given their investment in Israeli companies and the personal opinions expressed by one of their partners,” Mubi acknowledged in a June 14 statement. “The beliefs of individual investors do not reflect the views of MUBI. We take the feedback from our community very seriously, and are steadfast in remaining an independent founder-led company.”
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