Webtoon, Crunchyroll Team To Create New Animated Content

Webtoon, a webcomics publishing platform, and the anime and manga streaming service Crunchyroll have entered a strategic partnership to develop and coproduce new animated series based on Webtoon content.

The new partnership will look to create new animated series out of Webtoon content as well as oversee distribution and licensing for a variety of retail merchandise.

Crunchyroll general mananger Joanne Waage said, “Webtoon has a tremendous catalogue of content and creators that resonate deeply with our audience and we can’t think of a better way to delight fans than by bringing these stories to life through animation.

Webtoon produces original webcomics as well as offering a self-publishing platform that allows artists to produce new webcomics and retain ownership of their work. Webtoon also creates a variety of revenue opporturnities to attract veteran comics artists as well as aspiring cartoonists to publish their work via the Webtoon platform.

The site publishes thousands of ongoing series and attracts more than 55 million visitors a month globally.  Its comics can mostly be read for free on a weekly basis for for a fee fans can read ahead of scheduled comics. The comics are displayed online in a vertical scroll.

Crunchyroll offers streaming access to the most popular anime series in the world, among them My Hero Academia, Naruto and Attack on Titan and attracts more than 50 million registered users. Crunchyroll also hosts a range of events and offers games and  merchandise.

Webtoon senior v-p IP development Taylor Grant said, “There is tremendous crossover appeal with our audiences and exceptional creative synergy on the types of stories we want to tell. We’re excited to partner with Crunchyroll to bring our globally appealing characters to audiences and consumers in new ways, as well as create new opportunities for our talented creators.”