Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen will continue to lead Wattpad, with Lau reporting to Webtoon’s Kim. If you are looking to get into manhwa, these apps are going to be the perfect gateway. The company plans to grow its teams by 50% in 2021, expecting to hire nearly 100 staff in engineering, marketing, content and other areas. Fortunately, apps are available on both Android and iPhone that make reading manhwa and webtoons comfortable and easy, while offering large libraries of comics to choose from. Under the terms of the Naver acquisition, Wattpad remains based in Toronto. “The team at Wattpad Webtoon Studios is developing IP across formats, building franchises, and nurturing the fandoms that power them.” “Wattpad Webtoon Studios is here to knock down every remaining border in entertainment,” Webtoon founder and CEO Jun Koo Kim said in a statement. Wattpad has published hundreds of books with partners worldwide and 30 titles from the Wattpad Books imprint since launching in 2019. Books in the queue include the first volume of Rachel Smythe’s Webtoon graphic novel series, “Lore Olympus,” to be published by Penguin Random House in October 2021.
The Webtoon app is available for free download on Android and iOS devices. Numerous Eisner awards were presented to creators, and numerous Ringo awards were won. Webtoon elevates the story to a new level and beyond.
Publishing will remain a “key component” of the Wattpad Webtoon Studios strategy, the companies said. Webtoon, founded in 2014, has thousands of producers and is updated daily with new episodes. “After,” a story by Anna Todd, accumulated more than 1.5 billion reads on Wattpad before becoming a best-selling novel from Simon & Schuster and film from Voltage Pictures and Wattpad Studios in 2019. In addition, Netflix and Komixx Entertainment’s “The Kissing Booth” movies, based on the story Beth Reekles first wrote on Wattpad, have scored as among the streamer’s most popular originals.
TV and movie projects from the companies include Netflix’s Webtoon-originated “Sweet Home” “Noblesse,” an anime co-production between Webtoon and Crunchyroll, and the upcoming Netflix original film “A Través de Mi Ventana” from Nostromo Pictures, based on the global Wattpad hit of the same name. Reporting to Levitz are Taylor Grant, who leads the Webtoon entertainment portfolio Eric Lehrman, overseeing the Wattpad entertainment portfolio Ashleigh Gardner, who will continue to lead all aspects of publishing Dexter Ong, who will lead international business. 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.” “Businesses are spending billions of dollars to capture the last 100 years of IP. “We’re bringing a new era of diverse voices and incredible IP to audiences and an industry looking for both,” Levitz said in a statement.