The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2019
Huawei's 'Wukong': a bare-phone vertical film goes viral for Children's Day
Huawei's first bare-lens phone film: an 8-minute vertical story about a boy chasing the Monkey King, shot entirely on a P30 Pro.
Huawei (华为)
What it had to solve
Huawei's P30 series launched on a 'future image' promise of phone photography. The brand wanted Chinese consumers to feel the camera's capability emotionally, timed for Children's Day, rather than hear another spec sheet.
How it works
In May 2019, Huawei released 'Wukong' (悟空), an 8-minute-6-second vertical film about a boy who swaps his father's new pen for a Monkey King movie ticket, runs away from home, survives snakes and forest fires, and finally reaches a city that has jumped from 1990 to 2019. It was written and directed by Cai Chengjie, whose film 'The Narrow Road' won best picture and best director at the 11th FIRST International Film Festival.
The film was Huawei's first vertical movie shot with no external lens — four P30 Pro phones and a laptop were the entire camera kit. Cai treated it as a film rather than an ad: full film-crew structure, sound and color graded in a movie studio, with phones hung in trees, thrown into fire and rolled in barrels to test the camera. It launched at 11:17 on May 23, 2019 on Huawei Terminal's official Weibo as part of the 'Future Image' program run with the FIRST festival.
The response was immediate and unusually emotional for brand content: audiences read the boy's journey as Huawei's own climb from a rural start to global company, and the vertical format itself became the talking point. By 24:00 on June 3 the Weibo post had been retweeted over 12,800 times, drawing more than 3,200 comments and about 25,500 likes, with praise such as 'the dusty childhood memories of a fearless self' appearing throughout the replies.
The film carried no product shots or slogans. The only claim was the making-of: shot bare-lens on a P30 Pro. That single constraint turned a phone launch into a cultural conversation about whether vertical, phone-made images can be cinema — the question the film itself was built to ask.
Why it lands
- The constraint was the idea: 'bare-lens phone, vertical frame' gave audiences one unforgettable claim that outlasted any spec comparison.
- It told a story instead of selling features: the boy's Monkey King quest doubled as the brand's journey, so emotion carried the product proof.
- Vertical format matched mobile-native viewing: the film was made for the phone screen it was shot on, embracing rather than fighting the medium.
- Children's Day timing gave the film a holiday hook, turning a product film into a shared seasonal moment people sent to friends.
What it did
The film went viral around Children's Day: by June 3 its Weibo post had been retweeted more than 12,800 times, with 3,200+ comments and about 25,500 likes, and it became the season's most-discussed Chinese brand film, igniting a national debate about vertical film and phone-shot cinema.
What you can take
Let the constraint be the message: committing to 'shot on a phone, vertically' made every craft decision serve one claim, so product proof became the story itself, not a feature list.
Since then
'Wukong' became a reference point in China's vertical-video debate and is regularly cited as the moment a phone maker stopped selling specs and started selling cinema. Huawei continued its 'Future Image' film series with young directors in following years, and the film still circulates as a case study of branded content made under self-imposed constraints.
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