Three popular webtoon series, including "The Remarried Empress," "The Boxer" and "Teenage Mercenary," will be adapted into anime.
Line Digital Frontier (LDF), the Japanese subsidiary of Webtoon Entertainment, the parent company of Naver Webtoon, has partnered with Japanese animation studio Hayate and global anime streaming platform Crunchyroll to develop and produce anime adaptations of webtoons.
The three companies will collaborate from the early development stage on about 15 selected webtoon titles for potential anime adaptations. Hayate will lead development and production, while Crunchyroll will have exclusive streaming rights to some of the resulting series in select regions.
At a New York Comic Con showcase, the companies unveiled "The Remarried Empress" and "The Boxer" as new anime projects, joining "Teenage Mercenary," whose adaptation had been announced earlier. They also showed new footage and character images for all three series.
"The Remarried Empress," a fantasy romance webtoon based on a web novel, has recorded 3 billion views worldwide. A live-action drama adaptation starring Shin Min-a, Ju Ji-hoon and Lee Jong-suk is also scheduled to premiere next month.
"Teenage Mercenary," a school-action series, has accumulated 2.84 billion views worldwide, while "The Boxer," an action webtoon, has recorded 1.06 billion views.
hwangdh@heraldcorp.com
