Sam Register On How Webtoon Partnership Will Fuel Warner Bros. Animation’s Push For YA Streaming Hits

Warner Bros. Animation President Sam Register says partnering with Webtoon Entertainment will power up its push into streamer-friendly YA animation. Register and Webtoon Entertainment’s CFO David J. Lee spoke to Deadline at the recent Vancouver Web Summit and as they unveiled new shows they are co-developing.

“We are blessed with an amazing library of content; we have the DC library, we have the Looney Tunes library, we have Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo,” Register said. “Our growth strategy is that we need to take care of the characters we have, but we also have to look outside of our walls and at other IP. With Webtoon, there’s a massive audience globally, and so when we’re looking outside of our wonderful stable, it is an engine of stories and characters.”

Webtoon Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation joined forces last year to work up a slate of fan-favorite Webtoon series. At Web Summit they announced four more animated projects they will work on together: The Wolf & Red Riding Hood, Vampire Family, Sable Curse and Snow and Briar (And The Mirror of Seven Sins).

For Warner Bros., the tie-up aligns with a move deeper into YA, a genre that is already red-hot on streaming in live-action. Register notes the studio is playing in this category already with the likes of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, My Adventures with Superman and the upcoming My Adventures with Green Lantern. But with the streamers focusing on the YA demo more than the previous generation of TV buyers, several of the Webtoon shows it is developing are designed to hit that demo.

“We have something either in development or production with all the major platforms, and we know what they’re looking for,” Register said. “So, some of the [Webtoon] stuff that we chose might not be the biggest hits they have. But we think there are things there for the audiences that our partners on the streaming side would be interested in seeing.”

From a Webtoon perspective, tying with an historic animation studio that understands the TV and streaming market provides a new outlet for its IP. “We’re really good at web comics and web novels,” Lee said. “We think it could be a wonderful source of IP for a bunch of different storylines. We want partners that can see, in anime or animation, what sells. I would like Webtoon to be a source of strategic content.”

Webtoon not only has a huge number of stories flowing onto its platform, it has the numbers on which of those are resonating. It already crunches the data, but plans to go deeper as it partners with the likes of Warner Bros.

“I think we can be a much better partner to Sam and to others, to mine that data in a proactive way,” Lee said. “It’s pretty apparent what has gotten traction just from the sheer breadth and depth of the numbers, but there’s a whole level of sophistication around what [properties] could emerge that we haven’t yet provided.”

In many ways the YA dimension of the Webtoon-Warner Bros. link-up reflects the new world of animation distribution. Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and the kids broadcasters around the world are still there, but the streamers have shaken things up and have different priorities. They do not rely on ad revenues in the same way, and they can also launch a show globally from day one.

“There’s always going to be a home for Scooby-Doo and Batman, but we are a big company,” Register says. “I used to sell to Cartoon Network domestically, and then content would go to other places [internationally]. Now, when I’m going to streamers, they’re buying for the whole world.”