Wattpad WEBTOON President Says User-Created IP Is the Answer for a Franchise-Hungry Hollywood

The South Korean zombie episodic “All of Us Are Dead” currently ranks fourth among all Netflix non-English television shows in total hours viewed over the first 28 days, while “Through My Window” is Netflix’s fifth most-watched non-English feature film. “The Kissing Booth” trilogy began as one of the streamer’s flagship rom-com franchises during the 2018 “summer of love.” Meanwhile, the four-part “After” franchise has earned $133 million in global theatrical box office.

Even if these titles are somewhat foreign to you, your kids might count themselves as fans. All the above hits originated from Wattpad and WEBTOON.

“If you want to laugh in the morning and cry at night, you can,” Wattpad WEBTOON Studios president Aron Levitz told TheWrap for this week’s Office with a View. “If you want to dive into a romance written in one of the 50 languages on Wattpad in the afternoon and then dive into an action-driven RPG lit on Webtoon two hours later, you can.”

With 179 million global readers and now 100 television and film adaptations already in development, Wattpad WEBTOON (a single entity that merged in 2021) has become a treasure trove of on-platform success stories with built-in audiences and fandoms.

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What makes a digital comic different from an old-school pen-and-ink comic book?
It’s the vertical scrolling nature of it. You kick a ball, how does that look vertically? Artists aren’t confined by a page layout or episode length. It also lets them have jump scares and cliffhangers. Moreover, an episode can be just one shocking frame that tells a story.

So, Wattpad is fan-driven, user-driven opt-in creative writing sandbox, where anyone can make their own IP and if it becomes popular organically on the site then well, terrific?
Wattpad was born on the phone was born as a digital art form, write serial, it’s serialized, it’s not written all at once. That’s a huge barrier to entry for most artists. They can write a chapter, but can they write 40 chapters at once? I can write a chapter. But could I write 40 chapters at once? Even for those who can, those moments of engagement happen in serialization.

The other immersive idea behind these platforms, is that the art, the analysis, the feedback and the discourse can be all in one place. Was your intent to build a place where, essentially, fans and users never have to, metaphorically speaking, leave the amusment park?
We can understand subtext to why fans like or don’t like something. You want to be part of the discussion you are in a universe you fall in love with. You want to not just partake in it, but add to it.
Moreover, there’s a story on our platforms for everyone. It speaks to this transformational moment that both the web comic format, and even animation is having, which is, it used to be like a cartoon or a comic was a genre. It was superheroes, right? It’s no longer a genre. It’s a format. It’s a medium. We’re able to tell stories, from all walks of life, from countries around the world.”

Your platforms make new IP. Even if some of it is “rip-off, don’t remake,” that’s how we got “Star Wars” and “50 Shades of Grey.” They became their own IP with their own marquee characters. Is that what you bring to the table?
Tropes or tropes for a reason. It doesn’t mean that each generation doesn’t get their own view of it. Not just every generation, but every creator does have a different take. Fans can really help you understand why this take is the one.

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How do you moderate a new medium, one that’s almost a wild wild west of IP development from underrepresented demographics and/or niches?
Too much in the realm of moderation and guardrails is what’s driven Hollywood and the publishing industry into repeating itself for 100 years. We see our creators filling the next 100 years of screens and shelves all over the world, with stories that they haven’t seen on the screen or on the shelves.

What are the guardrails?
We don’t want to give our creators guardrails. We’re not insisting that they adhere to formula and narrative structures. We’re not here to confine. Trust and safety are the key pillars. We always ensure that it’s that our community is a safe one.

Is it a coincidence that most of the more popular third-party adaptations that general audiences might have heard are YA romantic melodramas?
It is surprising what the establishment will say has already been done. They forget to ask the fans what they want. And when you serve people what they want, they will flock to it.

How does what you do differentiate from the conventional IP development process?
We’re choosing things that audiences already love. We get to reduce the chances of failure just by listening to fans before we take something out, before we started adapting it. It’s listening to creators and fandom.

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