Naver, South Korea’s internet giant & owner of the most popular Korean webtoon publication – WEBTOON, will integrate Wattpad Studio with its WEBTOON Studio. Naver Corporation had acquired Wattpad, the Canada-based global multi-platform entertainment company, earlier in 2021. The company establishes ‘Wattpad WEBTOON Studios’ and will infuse $100 million for development and production financing.
Wattpad, WEBTOON Studios entity will invest the funds in production costs, business development, etc. so that IP verified through Naver WEBTOON and Wattpad can be made into video works.
Wattpad WEBTOON Studios plans to present various projects such as dramas, movies, and animations based on more than 1 billion original content created by about 5.7 million global creators. The goal is to cater to a variety of readers around the world of Naver WEBTOON and Wattpad, about 166 million.
Plans to produce movies, books based on webtoons
Currently, there are 167 projects under the IPs of Naver WEBTOON and Wattpad in production. ‘Sweet Home’ based on Naver WEBTOON and ‘Kissing Booth’ based on Wattpad were produced as Netflix originals and have gained worldwide popularity. In addition, the webtoon ‘Tower of God’, which surpassed 4.5 billion in cumulative views around the world, was produced as an animation with the participation of American and Japanese animation companies and is popularly aired on Crunchyroll and HBO Max. The teen drama ‘After,’ which recorded more than 1.5 billion cumulative views on Wattpad, was made into a movie and ranked first in 17 countries when it was released in 2019.
Wattpad’s productions are also published as books like ‘Lore Olympus’ by Rachel Smythe, scheduled to be published in October 2021. Wattpad has collaborated with global publishers in France, England, Italy, and the Philippines for more than 100 books.
Aaron Levitz, Head of Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, said in a media statement, “We’re looking to the future, with hundreds of millions of new stories to power the next 100 years of hits on screens and bookshelves.”
Naver WEBTOON has signed a partnership with three domestic and foreign video production studios Vertigo Entertainment, Rooster Teeth Studios, and Bound Entertainment, for video production of Korean work in the US.
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