William Hung - Television, Commercials and Movies

Television, Commercials and Movies

Hung has appeared in commercials for the search engine Ask.com, the Game Show Network (spoofing Freddie Mercury and singing an off-key "We Are the Champions"), as well as the mobile phone service provider Cingular Wireless. He also appeared to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in May 2004 at the Rogers Centre for the Toronto Blue Jays.

His first movie, a low-budget Hong Kong period comedy called Where is Mama's Boy (2004), was released in January 2005. Hung played a good-natured village kid who sells Chinese pancakes to pay his mother's medical bills. His character gets discovered as a singer, and helps a woman protect her business from her jealous, conniving elder sister. In the film, Hung played opposite veteran Hong Kong actress Nancy Sit and parodied his own American Idol performance with the song "Siu Beng" (Cantonese) ("Chinese Pancake"), an allusion to his American Idol audition song, "She Bangs." Despite solid financial backing and the involvement of Nancy Sit, the film was a box office flop.

Hung was the subject of a documentary called William Hung: Hangin' with Hung, a ninety minute film recounting his sudden rise to fame. Hung appeared as himself in a February 2006 episode of the television series Arrested Development titled "Fakin' It", acting as the front-man of a band, "William Hung and his Hung Jury", the house band for a fictional courtroom-themed show Mock Trial with J. Reinhold.

Hung has appeared in an episode of the MTV Show, Celebrity Deathmatch, where he battles Ricky Martin (who performed the original "She Bangs").

In the episode Sexual Harassment of the American version of The Office, the letters "WL HUNG" appear on Todd Packer's vanity plate and is mistaken to be a reference to Hung. The letters actually stood for "Well hung".

He has also appeared in Airline in which he missed his flight, then sang his infamous song once again for the cameras.

Hung has also been portrayed as a Chinese fairy in the Fairly OddParents movie, Fairy Idol. The fairy also sang horribly, but sang the Fairly OddParents theme song instead.

Hung also made a cameo appearance on an episode of George Lopez, auditioning as a wedding singer.

American Idol season 9 semi-finalist Todrick Hall auditioned in Dallas, Texas with an original audition song that mentioned Hung.

In May 2012, Korean-American singer Jay Park released a song titled "William Hung" on his mixtape, Fresh A!r: Breathe !t.