Category: Comics

ViacomCBS announces partnership with Wattpad and Webtoon to adapt several original series

On By alanapotIn Comics, Media Covergence, Partnerships & Copyright, StreamingLeave a comment

image via Wattpad WEBTOON studios https://company.wattpad.com/blog/wattpad-and-webtoon-merge-studio-divisions-to-create-wattpad-webtoon-studios-a-fully-funded-fan-driven-global-entertainment-powerhouse

Following successes like The Kissing Booth or After franchise, ViacomCBS is partnering with Wattpad WEBTOON studios to adapt original online content for the screen.

Webtoon is a virtual publishing website where users can write and publish their written work. Many authors get their start on the site and gain popularity from online readers, eventually landing them a publishing deal. This was the case for the authors of The Kissing Booth and After. There are millions of stories published on the site along with sister site, Webtoon, that published comics and illustrated stories rather than just text. Wattpad and Webtoon became Wattpad Webtoon studios when Wattpad was purchased by Naver, Webtoon’s parent company, for over $600 million USD in June 2021.

With the studio, ViacomCBS plans to develop original content for several of its networks and properties, one of which being Paramount+. This partnership and plan show that ViacomCBS is working on rolling out more content specifically catered to a millennial and Gen Z audience.

“Wattpad WEBTOON Studios is home to some of the most exciting new voices in comics and literature,” “Between our massive global IP catalogue with built-in fandoms, and a roster of superstar comic artists and indie authors, we’re fueling a new era of data-backed entertainment. We’re thrilled to work with ViacomCBS International Studios,  a company that shares our vision to transform entertainment by elevating the creativity and fandoms of a new generation of storytellers. Working together with ViacomCBS International Studios, we’ll bring more diverse, original voices to screens all over the world.” 

Aron Levitz, President of Wattpad WEBTOON Studios

As media professionals, this partnership is meaningful because it shows a liaison between big, traditional media and new media. Like “youtube creator” or “tiktok creator” becoming new and relevant jobs in the field, a digital author is one as well. Anyone can get their start on Wattpad or Webtoon if they make an account. Now, hopping on your laptop and writing fanfiction for fun might land you a steaming series deal with media giant ViacomCBS.

Keck, Katie. “ViacomCBS announces partnership with Wattpad to adapt originals” 8, December 2021. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22825153/wattpad-webtoon-originals-paramount-plus-viacomcbs

https://company.wattpad.com/blog/viacomcbs-international-studios-partners-with-wattpad-webtoon-studiosto-discover-diverse-talent-and-develop-series-from-webtoon-and-wattpad-hits

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Netflix’s YuYu Hakusho Live-Action Adaptation Gets A Release Date

On By Noah Furcht-HeafitzIn Comics, Netflix, Streaming, UncategorizedLeave a comment
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-11-09/netflix-schedules-live-action-yu-yu-hakusho-series-for-december-2023/.179396, Adriana Hazra

Last Tuesday Netflix announced that it will be releasing its live-action adaptation of Yoshihiro Togashi’s YuYu Hakusho manga worldwide in December of 2023. Akira Morii and Kazutaka Sakamoto, Netflix’s content acquisition directors, are executive producing and producing this project respectively. Sakamoto recounted his own fond experiences with the intellectual property in question and insisted that Netflix is doing its best to do right by the fans he knows the series has all around the world. The series follows a 14-year-old delinquent named Yusuke Urameshi who dies after throwing himself in front of a car to save a child. Because of his selfless act, Yusuke is allowed to come back to the world of the living as a “spirit detective” tasked with defeating demons. For this project, Netflix and TOHO Studios signed a several-year contract to lease two of TOHO’s stage facilities; stage 7 and stage 10. In addition, ten sound stages, two acting centres, and a production centre of TOHO’s will also be used to create Netflix’s original programming. This deal goes into effect as of April first of 2022. 

The popularity of YuYu Hakusho’s 19 volume manga (1992-1995) has led to the creation of an anime adaptation, two live-action films, two animated films, and a stage play that ran from August to September of 2019. Said films and anime have all been dubbed and distributed in various languages and territories by Funimation, Media Blasters and Central Park Media respectively. The series notably acquired fans domestically by way of its airing on Adult Swim’s Toonami block. Further emphasizing the popularity of this property is the fact that new animated material for it has been released as recently as 2018 to celebrate the series’s 25th anniversary.

This article interests me for two main reasons. For one, I’m generally happy to hear that an older property like YuYu Hakusho is getting a Netflix live-action adaptation. For another, I think Netflix’s partnering with TOHO Studios speaks well of the potential for more live-action anime adaptations going forward. This especially in the event that the soon to be released Cowboy Bebop and One Piece adaptations do well.

Erskine, Donovan. “YouTube to Make Dislike Counts Private on All Videos.” Shacknews, Shacknews, 10 Nov. 2021, https://www.shacknews.com/article/127617/youtube-to-make-dislike-counts-private-on-all-videos.

Netflix’s One Piece Adaptation Has its Logo Revealed

On By Noah Furcht-HeafitzIn Brand, Comics, Netflix, TwitterLeave a comment
https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/series/netflix-unveils-logo-one-piece-live-action-adaptation

Last Friday the NetflixGeeked Twitter account posted twice pertaining to the upcoming live-action adaptation of the One Piece property. The former of the two posts revealing the official logo of the series and the latter being a picture of the front page of the first episode’s script. The official logo’s post was captioned “no matter how hard or how impossible it is, never lose sight of your goal”, a quote attributed to the series’s protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. The logo itself is a slightly altered reimagining of the manga’s logo. The key difference in said logo being that, where Luffy’s silhouette is the “i” in the manga’s logo in this one he instead assumes his iconic stance in the nose cavity of the skull present. Meanwhile, the script reveals the first episode’s working title to be “Romance Dawn”; this being a name it shares with both the first chapter/story arc of the manga as well as One Piece author Eiichiro Oda’s previous one-shot project that later itself became One Piece. One Piece is significant for being the best selling manga of all time, running for nearly 25 years, and having an excess of 950 anime episodes based on it. With this context it becomes obvious why Netflix would want to approach Oda to create a live-action adaptation. This adaptation was announced in 2020 and little has come out about it since. Fans are nothing if not skeptical seeing as the history of manga to live-action adaptations has been disastrous. Train wrecks the likes of Dragon Ball Evolution, Netflix’s Death Note adaptation, and the live-action attempt at a Full Metal Alchemist film have left fans of manga feeling hopeless. The fact that Eiichiro Oda is on as an executive producer for this project, fans hope, signals that this time will be different.

This article interests me because I’m a big fan of the One Piece manga. One Piece being a surreal dystopian super power-driven sci-fi fantasy epic I’m excited to see how the crew behind it is going to spend the purported 9-10 million dollar per episode budget. One Piece has already enraptured the world’s populous to such an extent that despite being a single creator run series it has more circulating copies than there are for Batman comics. If this adaptation takes off and launches One Piece into the American mainstream it could have game-changing implications for the future of media comparable to what the first Iron Man film did back in 2008.

Bulten, Izak. “Netflix Unveils Logo for Its Upcoming One Piece Series.” Game Rant, 7 Sept. 2021, gamerant.com/netflix-logo-one-piece-series/.

Valentine, Evan. “One Piece Sales Might Have Just OVERTAKEN Batman at Last.” Anime, Comicbook.com, 21 July 2021, comicbook.com/anime/news/one-piece-sales-overtake-batman-dc-comics/.

Tseros, Peter. “One Piece’s LIVE-ACTION Tv Show Will Cost a Lot of Money.” Anime, Comicbook.com, 5 Sept. 2017, comicbook.com/anime/news/-one-pieces-live-action-tv-show-will-cost-a-lot-of-money/.