Beginning early next year, Webtoon intends to start releasing short-form animation. Executives said the company, headquartered in Los Angeles, has been building technology for shorter-form animation alongside its main production pipeline, with the first projects targeted for early 2027.
Those early releases will be exclusive to Webtoon at first, though the company said it could license them to outside streaming platforms depending on the project. Episodes are planned as short installments, potentially about seven to eight minutes each, to expand adaptations without chasing the same high-end anime slots.
"When we see a Webtoon series with strong potential for animation, we want to adapt it faster, while the original is still popular and being serialized," President Yongsoo Kim said. He described the aim as moving fans from comics to animation, followed by games and merchandise, and eventually returning them to Webtoon, all while compressing that cycle.
Founder and CEO Junkoo Kim said, "The animation market has extremely strong gatekeepers." Japan's anime model depends on a small group of established studios and production lines, so only a fraction of titles secure financing and capacity. Webtoon aims to route around that constraint with technology that enables shorter animation to be made more quickly and at lower cost.
Webtoon recently announced a partnership involving HAYATE - a studio formed by Sony Group's Aniplex and Crunchyroll - and its Japan arm Line Digital Frontier, aiming to explore anime adaptations for about 15 Webtoon series, including The Boxer and The Remarried Empress.
Separately, Lore Olympus - one of Webtoon's biggest hits, which has drawn more than 1.8 billion global views - is in production with Amazon's Prime Video and the Jim Henson Company. The company also maintains a development slate of 10 projects with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. Premium anime remains costly and slow to produce, with limited studio capacity as demand grows, which is why Webtoon is adding a shorter format track.
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Webtoon posted a net loss of $14.6 million, mainly attributable to marketing costs, which expanded from $3.9 million a year earlier. In Japan - its largest market - second quarter revenue dropped 15.4%, and paying users fell 9.5%.
The company is also leaning on its Disney tie-up. On Nov. 16, the company plans to launch a Marvel Comics subscription app and manage it, with Webtoon's personalization and discovery technology powering access to more than 35,000 titles. Last year, Disney purchased approximately a 2% stake in Webtoon.
Beyond that, Webtoon is betting that partnerships, animation and artificial intelligence can unlock more value from its IP, including an AI-powered digital-character service that lets fans chat with characters on the platform. "Our content starts with stories and ends with characters," founder Kim said.
The bottom line: speed to screen and smarter distribution are the swing factors. Watch whether short-form animation and the Marvel app drive engagement that offsets Japan's slowdown and turns more franchises into paying customers.
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