Naver Ventures Invests in Emmy-Winning Studio Baobab for New Webtoon
The deal ties a webtoon platform's parent to an animation studio on SHINE, a webcomic Baobab will expand into film, television, streaming, and gaming while keeping those rights itself.
Reporting from 1 source: Anime News Network.
Naver Ventures, the U.S. investment arm of NAVER, the parent company of WEBTOON Entertainment, has made a strategic investment in Baobab Studios, the 10-time Emmy-winning animation studio behind Namoo and Crow: The Legend. The partnership pairs Baobab with WEBTOON on SHINE, an original fantasy adventure webcomic by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Erick Oh and webtoon creator Madeleine Rosca, set in a futuristic Korea.
SHINE follows a half-human girl who must bridge the divide between the human and spirit worlds to save Korea, after the balance between the two has been shattered. Baobab is developing the title as a webtoon with WEBTOON alongside a print graphic novel from First Second Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.
Baobab will keep the film, television, streaming, and gaming rights to the property as it expands the IP across formats. The studio announced the investment on Wednesday.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.