Defunct Web Series Get New Life on DVD

Remember when web-based entertainment was going to put the networks out of business? Okay, so they went bankrupt before they could take on the world. But there’s still apparently some life in the once comically over-hyped medium.

A couple of the more politically incorrect (and less juvenile) web series are going to be released on DVD, according to a report in Daily Variety.

Icebox.com’s Mr. Wong will be released by Maverick Ent. and National Lampoon in mid-February. And later this year, Revolution Studios will distribute its feature-length, Flash animated film of MediaTrip.com’s Lil’ Pimp.

South Park writers Pam Brady and Kyle McCulloch created Mr. Wong. Fifteen episodes of the edgy series will be on the DVD/VHS release. At the time, Mr. Wong (with its title song sung by former Monkee Davy Jones) caused a lot of distress for Asian American media watch-dog groups such as the Media Action Network for Asian Americans and the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition. The title character, a Chinese houseboy, was viewed by many as the recycling of an offensive racial stereotype.

For its part, Revolution’s Lil’ Pimp movie, has been in the works for a couple of years. A DVD release date has yet to be announced. The Lil’ Pimp series recounted the exploits of a 9-year-old white boy who excels at hustling women in an urban neighborhood and hangs out with the local pimps and his Tourettes-inflicted pet gerbil, Weathers. The project was originally supposed to get a theatrical release, but that never happened.