This Week in Webtoon-ish, June 28
No massive closures or reveals this week in the webtoon industry. Thank god. Last week was enough for the quarter.
But, with Anime Expo just around the corner, we should be hearing more from Big Green and a few others in just a week’s time.
WEBTOON’s New Short Video Platform has a Name
The platform is rumored to be named, "Cuts”, with a preliminary logo featuring the familiar green shape on the WEBTOON logo with a white play button at the center. This explains a bit of the UI changes that have appeared on WEBTOON lately including the push to increase exposure of their short video content.
Source: Nate
Naver Webtoon Crossover with the KBO League
In a relatively rare instance of webtoons stepping outside of their normal boundaries, “Chunbae”, a cute cat character from Naver Webtoon, had a cross-over pop-up store event with Kieum. The webtoon character was featured on limited edition jerseys and fan merch, for which fans started lining up at 3 AM. Fun fact: Kieum is the parent company of Kidari Studio who also owns Lezhin Entertainment.
Source: Dailian
WEBTOON Has 20 Animated Projects Under Development
“Teenage Mercenary” is the latest webtoon slated for an animated adaptation which brings the total to 20 ongoing projects under the Naver Webtoon banner. This includes “Dark Moon” which is being developed with HIVE and “Omniscient Reader” which was produced by Riverse, a subsidiary of REDICE.
Source: iNews24
KT Contracts with Kakao Entertainment for Webnovel Licensing
KT’s newest platform venture, “Millie’s Library” will benefit from a recent contract with Kakao Entertainment. Around 30 completed webnovel titles will be added to the fledgling service as one of Korea’s largest telecoms pushes a new content platform through to its customer base.
Source: Chosun Biz