Profile: Brother Orange

American chat show host Ellen DeGeneres is to act as an executive producer on the feature, which is based on an unlikely friendship that crossed cultural divides.

It’s a bizarre story involving an American writer whose phone was stolen, and “Brother Orange” a Chinese man who was given the phone as a present from his nephew who didn’t realise it belonged to someone else.

Buzzfeed editor Matt Stopera had all but forgotten about his old phone when he spotted strange pictures on his new phone’s photostream. Most were of a man beside an orange tree and the story of Stopera’s search for “Brother Orange” went viral and eventually took him to China where the pair became a media sensation.

The story was shared internationally over one million times and resulted in Brother Orange, whose real name is Li Hongjun, flying to the States to appear with Stopera on DeGeneres’s show.

Now she is to executive produce the movie along with Stopera. As well as teaming up with Buzzfeed to make the film, Warner Bros is working with Flagship Entertainment, a joint venture between the studio and CMC Holdings founded 10 months ago to target the market in China.

It is the first film project from Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, the video arm of internet media company Buzzfeed.

HOW DID IT ALL START?

The story began in 2014 when Stopera’s iPhone5 was stolen as he drank in his favourite New York bar. He thought he would never see it again but a year later he was looking at his photostream on his new phone when he came across pictures he hadn’t taken, including around 20 of a man and an orange tree.

New pictures then kept turning up on a daily basis until Stopera was told by a friend that the phone had probably ended up in China and must still be logged onto Stopera’s iCloud.

Checking with Apple, Stopera found the phone was still registered and shut down the account so it could no longer be used.

There the story might have ended if Stopera had not then decided to write about it and publish the pictures on Buzzfeed.

Within hours of publication he started to get tweets from China where the story had been translated and posted on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

It soon became the biggest story on the Chinese internet so Stopera decided to join Weibo, collecting 50,000 followers in his first day and 100,000 by the end of the week.

WHAT ABOUT BROTHER ORANGE?

Meanwhile, in a remote part of China, Li Hongjun was wondering why his new phone was no longer working. It had been given to him by his nephew, a phone salesman, but while Li knew it was secondhand from the US he did not know it had been stolen. He had been pleased with it even though strange pictures turned up on his photostream every day, many of them featuring a thin, bearded white man who was so pale Li thought he was English.

Li had used the phone to take selfies in an orange grove just before the Chinese New Year. Oranges are considered lucky at that time and Li decided he could use some as he was deep in debt from hospital fees incurred by his recently deceased parents along with the failure of a business venture.

What he didn’t realise was that the pictures he had taken were about to turn him into an internet celebrity as well as introduce him to a culture he knew little about.

His nephew, Li Jie, was the first to tell him the photos had made him famous. They decided there would be no harm in contacting the American and Li began to message Stopera through Weibo, eventually inviting him to visit.

DID HE GO TO CHINA?

Stopera accepted and travelled across the world to meet Li in Meizhou in southern China, but even he was not prepared for the media frenzy that greeted him as soon as he stepped off the plane. Both Stopera and Li, who was there to welcome him, were surrounded by photographers, journalists and fans, and so it continued everywhere they went for the entire visit. Twenty-five reporters even stood and watched as they took a mudbath.

Stopera wrote at the time: “We develop a bond over the madness that’s happening around us. As crazy as it sounds, a mutual understanding of the ‘spotlight’ can really bring you close together quick. We become a team.”

Later he got to know Li better and wrote: “Thing is, Brother Orange is a really great guy. He’s a great dad and a great son. He’s had a rough couple of years.

‘‘I find out that both his parents died in 2012. He moved back to his hometown to take care of them. Besides that, his investment in a fishing boat went bad. After a flood, the government forced him to take his boat out of the water. Things have been pretty shitty for Bro lately.”

After Stopera returned to the States, the pair kept in touch and the DeGeneres show eventually flew Li over to appear on American television.

However while more people now go to Li’s restaurant in Meizhou because of his celebrity status, he is not yet out of debt. Perhaps the film will help to solve his money problems.