On Tuesday, the Bruce Lee Estate teased the launch of “House of Lee,” a partnership with NFT video platform Shibuya that will bring the late actor and martial arts legend into Web3. The teaser came in the form of a Tweet showing an old interview with the icon. In it, the appearance of Bruce Lee changes to anime-style.
The collaboration begins with the sale of an open edition Bruce Lee NFT that Emily Yang, the Web3 artist better known as “pplpleasr” and co-founder of Shibuya, created alongside Shannon Lee, president of the Bruce Lee Estate and daughter of the icon.
From now until Friday, April 14th, Bruce Lee fans can mint an unlimited number of the open edition NFTs for 0.008 ETH or around $15. So far, nearly 20,000 NFTs have been minted, a number not seen from even some innovative open-edition NFT projects like Jack Butcher’s “VV Checks.”
The “House of Lee: Genesis” NFTs will likely hold future utility, as the tagline for the collection on Manifold reads, “This is your ticket to the House of Lee.” In addition, a representative of Shibuya said this NFT drop is the first phase of a collaboration with the Bruce Lee Estate, though they would not share details about future phases of the project.
Blockchain sleuths will note that one of the two Ethereum Name Service domains associated with the drop is “bruceleeanime.eth.” One of Shibuya’s specialties is producing anime-style films, as it has done with its White Rabbit project, which explores the history of crypto.
Shibuya and Emily ‘pplpleasr’ Yang on the Rise in Web3
While digital art has found a home in the non-fungible token space, fewer individuals are working on tokenizing movies as NFTs. One person that is leading the charge to change that is digital artist Emily Yang, who, through her company Shibuya, has tokenized two films that give holders the right to vote on plot developments. Here are our three top stories involving her in the past 12 months.
First, two months ago, Shibuya released a collection of NFTs for its new project “Dominion X: Level 2.” Holders of the non-fungible tokens will be able to vote on the plot of the Seth Green-produced film. They will also receive an NFT reward with a rarity level depending on how much they participated in the creative process.
Next, four months ago, Shibuya raised $6.9 million in a seed round Andreesen Horowitz and Variant Fund led. Yang said the money will go to filling out her staff, including hiring a UX/UI designer, and exploring more options for content.
Lastly, 11 months ago, Yang released “Producer Pass” NFTs for the Cannes Film Festival. The NFTs came in the three tiers — bronze, silver, and gold — and included many in-real-life benefits, such as having access to the red-carpet event or being able to attend the opening or closing ceremony.
As the news over the past year shows, Shibuya and Yang have been busy in the NFT space. If the Bruce Lee drop is a success, we’ll likely hear more from her in the coming months as the next phases of the project roll out. Rarity Sniper will be here to report back when they do.