Flashspoter - Webtoon Entertainment in partnership with Warner Bros. Animation to develop ten adaptation projects of the popular webcomic series on the Webtoon platform. This collaboration marks a major expansion in the Webtoon animation pipeline, while strengthening the company's global expansion in bringing original stories to international animation formats.
The agreement includes the development of projects taken from the catalog of Webtoon works in Korean and English. The development process will involve the US-based Webtoon Productions team, as well as the Japanese IP business division. Webtoons ensure that creators retain intellectual ownership of their original work and will earn a share of the revenue generated through animation projects produced.
Over the past few years, webtoons have been actively encouraging cross-media adaptation. Many titles from this platform have been lifted into live-action series, anime, to animated films by various major studios such as Netflix, Prime Video, Crunchyroll, to Disney. Webtoon is now, with around 155 million monthly users globally, one of the most significant sources of original stories.
During the time, Warner Bros. Animation has been known as a studio that deals with a wide range of characters and franchises that have become the icons of the past and present. The studio is managing a vast catalog from DC, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera to MGM. Besides, they are not few the days when they dropped a couple of big projects such as the anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and the animated film the day the Earth Blew Up: a Looney Tunes film. As a result of such a history, the partnership is considered a move of both parties to broaden their offerings to the international markets in terms of content.
For the initial phase, four titles have been confirmed in the development list. First, Hong Dae Ui, Juno, and Q10's the Stellar Swordmaster, a fantasy story about an orphan who plunges into the world of crime and swords after tragedy strikes the place where he works. Second, Sehoon Kim's Hardcore Leveling Warrior, which focuses on a top gamer named Ethan whose life changes drastically after his character is forced back to level one.
Pookie Senpai's Down to Earth is the third title, a cheerful love story manga series that revolves around a guy, whose life gets totally changed when an alien girl crashlands in his backyard. Finally, AC Stuart and Victor Rosas II's Elf & Warrior, which follows the adventures of a young half-elf and a group of escapees led by his uncle.
The four titles were selected based on their popularity on the Webtoon platform and their potential for being used in an animated format. However, these works are only in the initial stages of development and do not have a timetable for their release. The parties also have not revealed the final format of each title, whether it will be developed as a series or animated film.
The trend of webcomic and manhwa adaptation to anime or animation is indeed on the rise sharply in recent years. Solo Leveling's huge success on the international scene was one of the factors that accelerated the increase in global interest in manhwa's work. Other adaptations such as Tower of God and True Beauty helped expand manhwa's exposure to the mainstream market. With the great interest of the younger generation audience and the increasing demand for cross-platform content, the cooperation of Webtoon and Warner Bros. Animation is predicted to be one of the important steps in expanding the scope of the adaptation.
As the project progressed, Webtoon and Warner Bros. Animation is expected to announce more titles out of a total of ten planned series. New information is likely to be released gradually considering that each project is still in the early stages of development. To date, this collaboration is one of the largest creative collaborations between a webcomic-based company and a global animation studio.
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