Warner taps Webtoon for TV

Warner Bros. Animation is not buying one comic and testing the waters. It is building a slate of 10 animated projects with Webtoon Entertainment, which means the studio is treating phone-first comics as a pipeline, not a side bet. (about.webtoon.com) The deal was announced on November 12, 2025, and Webtoon said the projects are intended for global distribution rather than one domestic channel or one single streaming service. (businesswire.com) Webtoon is the company behind vertically scrolling digital comics built for phones, and it said it has about 155 million monthly active users worldwide. That gives Warner Bros. Animation something Hollywood keeps chasing: stories that already have readers before a pilot is even storyboarded. (variety.com) This is not just a Korea play. Webtoon said the 10 projects will be selected from both its Korean-language and English-language platforms, with support from its United States production team and its Japanese intellectual property teams. (about.webtoon.com) Warner Bros. Animation brings a very different machine to that equation. The studio sits inside Warner Bros. and manages brands from DC Comics, Hanna-Barbera, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Looney Tunes, so it knows how to turn characters into long-running animation franchises. (variety.com) The first four comics named for development show how broad the bet is. They are “Down to Earth,” “The Kiss Bet,” “Suitor Armor,” and “Elf Warrior,” which span romance, fantasy, and action instead of one narrow genre lane. (variety.com) Webtoon’s pitch to studios is simple: these comics are already being tested in public. Readers subscribe, comment, share episodes, and push series up the charts in real time, so executives can see audience demand before paying for full production. (thewrap.com) That feedback loop is one reason webcomics have become adaptation bait. Instead of waiting for bookstore sales or television ratings, platforms like Webtoon can spot breakout stories while they are still being serialized on phones. (thewrap.com) There is also a money angle for creators. Variety reported that the original creators keep ownership of their intellectual property and receive a share of revenue generated from the animation projects under their agreements with Webtoon. (variety.com) Webtoon is not entering animation from scratch. Before this Warner deal, adaptations from its ecosystem had already landed on Netflix, Prime Video, and Crunchyroll, which gave the company a track record it could take into a bigger studio partnership. (variety.com) So the headline is less “comic site gets Hollywood meeting” and more “major studio locks in a supply chain.” Warner Bros. Animation gets 10 stories with built-in readership, and Webtoon gets a partner that can move those stories from a phone screen into worldwide animation distribution. (deadline.com)