Momo Film & Bros Studio partner to adapt Kenaz webtoons

Momo Film, the Beach House Pictures-owned Singapore production company, has signed a co-production deal with Seoul-based Bros Studio to develop a slate of Kenaz webtoons into scripted content.

The deal will see the two companies adapting the comics, which are designed specifically for mobile phones, to bring them to life as television series for international audiences. Already in development are adaptations of Sunny and Baolong’s Mirror Game and BaStards and Siho’s All About Money.

In Mirror Game, it’s an ultimate race against time when a master illusionist with devious intentions becomes a viral sensation after successfully hypnotizing people online, while in All About Money, three best friends unexpectedly come across $1bn and are thrown into the illicit world of crime and corruption.

The projects will be backed by Beach House Pictures who have been increasing investment into scripted development and productions internationally, working on titles including Mr Midnight for Netflix and the recently announced Ink Factory development deal for a television series of the 1970s Singapore action trilogy, Cleopatra Wong.

Kenaz is a Korean webtoon platform and the first Korean studio to provide webtoon IP to Apple Books. Working with Bros Studio, Kenaz is expanding its webtoon film and television productions.

“We are in the era of NFTs, AI, VR, and K-content, and I believe that webtoons is the medium that connects all of those trends and technologies,” said Woody Lee, CEO of Kenaz. “Webtoons not only has the potential to be a source of entertainment and content, but it also can become the source of technology and content such as NFTs and AI.”

Based in Seoul and Los Angeles, Bros is a Korean-American talent management company with an focus on cross-border content, acting as a bridge between Korea and Hollywood. Bros has a division exclusively focused on creating content based on webcomics IP.

“We are now seeing the global markets open up to viewing webtoon IPs, popular in their native digital format for many years in Korea, in motion-picture format,” says Joseph Jang, co-founder of Bros Studios. “We look forward to working alongside Momo Film Co. to bring more of those stories to the global viewing audience.”

This is the first foray into webtoons for Momo Film, a scripted Southeast Asian producer, which is committed to collaborating with filmmakers to produce Asian drama for international viewers.

“We are thrilled to work on these incredible narratives that have large fan communities and look forward to getting more Asian IPs made and producing stories that need to be seen on screen,” added Si En, MD & co-founder of Momo.